Joseph Paxton
Statue of Sir Joseph Paxton MP 1803-1865 by W F Woodington, 1869,
now standing at the entrance to Crystal Palace Park
Paxton was born in Milton-Bryant near Woburn in 1803. As superintendent of gardens to the Duke of Devonshire at Chiswick and Chatsworth from 1826, he remodelled the gardens and became familiar with greenhouse construction, finally building the Great Conservatory at Chatsworth from 1836 to 1840, in which he experimented with a system of glass and metal construction.
However, it was the Victoria Regia Lily House that he built at Chatsworth in 1848 that he acknowledged was the model for the building for the Great Exhibition of 1851. Later dubbed 'The Crystal Palace', it was designed so that all the parts could be factory-made and constructed on site, and was epoch-making as the first completely prefabricated building. Paxton received a knighthood for his efforts. Elected MP for Coventry in 1854, he also oversaw the design of many large country houses, including Mentmore, before his early death in 1865.
Paxton's blotting-paper sketch of the Crystal Palace, made during
a railway company board room meeting at Derby
