Traditional, Victorian conservatories are so inspiring because they are so ambitious, beautiful and uncompromising in terms of their design and use of materials to perfectly complement an existing home and garden.
Despite this, they are also the pieces of Victorian architecture at most threat to the ravages of time, in part because of their reliance on wrought iron decades before the galvanisation and better steel production made them less vulnerable to corrosion.
Two of the largest and most beautiful large-scale conservatories of the Victorian Era, London’s Crystal Palace and the Great Conservatory at Chatsworth House, both ended up being destroyed between the two World Wars.
The Great Conservatory was demolished in 1920 as a consequence of fuel rationing during the First World War, which meant that all of the tropical plants held there had died, and the family who lived there could not afford to pay ten men to keep it running.
Crystal Palace, on the other hand, burned to the ground in 1936 in what still remains somewhat mysterious circumstances but what television inventor John Logie Baird claimed for the rest of his life was an act of sabotage.
Both of these great conservatories now exist merely as memories, photographs and the legacy they have passed on to other conservatories developed using its technologies and architectural styles.
However, there is another Great Conservatory in England that not only survived the conditions that led to the end of Chatsworth House’s conservatory but still exists to this very day as a groundbreaking example and muse for modern orangery designers.
From Markets To Manor Houses
It is impossible to talk about the Great Conservatory at Syon House without talking about its rather unique creator and the path he took to construct a tremendous monument to the Industrial Revolution.
Born in Devon in 1792, Charles Foster had the rather unusual specialisation of market buildings and shopping arcades, most famous for his work designing the historic Covent Garden Market.
He was a foremost architect of the Industrial Revolution in no small part because he was an early adherent of the principle that form follows function, decades before the term was even coined.
Before his most famous building however, he was commissioned by the Duke of Northumberland to develop a conservatory for Syon House, taking advantage of advances in the production of glass and in the work Mr Fowler had already achieved in metalworking up to that point.
The result was a beautiful neoclassical structure, focused purely on being as good an environment for exotic plants and suitable for the needs of the country house rather than prioritising novelty or empty aesthetics.
Despite this, however, it did ultimately prove to be highly influential, both on the other Great Conservatory at Chatsworth House and on Crystal Palace, home of the first World’s Fair, then known as The Great Exhibition.
Unlike those two buildings, however, it also managed to survive and exist to this day. To understand what was different and how it managed to remain in astonishingly good condition for a structure made of metal and glass from 1827, it is important to know how it was used, before and after the death of the country house.
The Life, Death And Rebirth Of Syon House
Syon House was one of many beautiful English country houses dotted around the English countryside, but despite their reputation as monuments of heritage and history, there had been a recurring pattern of refurbishment, expansion, contraction and demolition.
Syon House itself had been significantly altered in the 1760s and many homes had been demolished. As they were private residences owned by the landed gentry it was seen as their right, irrespective of the cultural damage.
This was the logic behind the destruction of Chatsworth House’s Great Conservatory to practically no fanfare, despite being an engineering marvel of tremendous scale even without any plants.
The First World War had proved to be not only a tremendously devastating conflict with a scale of destruction unparalleled at the time, but it also predicted a massive cultural shift, where major country houses being destroyed became the norm rather than the exception.
Taxation increased to pay for the conflicts, and many of the buildings were commandeered for the war effort, which led to Syon House becoming a hospital, and faced with massive repair costs, tax bills and staff that had either died or left to work elsewhere, many homes were destroyed entirely.
It took until 1968 for preservation to become the norm for country houses, with the Town and Country Planning Act 1968 and a very popular 1974 exhibition all about the destruction of the country house.
This spared Syon House and its surviving conservatory, which has since been renovated and become a major part of English heritage and a popular tourist attraction in London.