Cabinet of Curiosities - a Baby Dinosaur

A few months ago I wrote on this blog about an ending for me – finishing my life as a civil servant. Since then I've had another ending – and, excitingly, a new beginning – because I've moved from London to Brighton.

I’ve lived in London all my adult life and in Crystal Palace for nearly fourteen years. It has been a wonderful place to live. I’ve always loved its history and the sense of community and shared identity that brings, and I’ll miss it very much. 

Me on Dinosaur Island, Crystal Palace Park

Photo: L O'Sullivan 

Crystal Palace wasn’t always known as such. But after the success of the Great Exhibition in 1851 it was decided to rebuild Joseph Paxton’s masterpiece on a permanent site, and run it as a commercial enterprise. A commanding position on top of a ridge in south London on the borders of Upper Norwood, Penge and Sydenham was chosen, the Palace rebuilt and a new identity forged.

It became the defining feature of the area, bringing millions of people to visit and live over the next 80 years and changing it forever. Two train stations were built to manage the influx of visitors. Many of the bus routes in south London end in Crystal Palace even now because of the number of people who wanted to get to the attraction. And, as across London, huge numbers of houses were built, but in this case many of them were large and beautiful villas for the well-to-do, wanting to live in this now-fashionable spot.

The Crystal Palace burned down in a catastrophic fire in 1936. The site of the Palace and grounds is now the local park. You can see the foundations of the Palace at the top of the hill, complete with a few of the original statues. There are two more complete reminders of the heyday of the Crystal Palace, however, which I have especially loved while living here:

The Megalosaurus, striding through the

autumn foliage. Photo C. Wightwic

1) The Dinosaurs. I’ve written about them before, but I make no bones (boom boom) about doing so again. Declaring an Interest, I’m now on the Board of the charity that works to promote and conserve the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs (most of which aren’t actually Dinosaurs, but hey…) They were built in the 1850s as an attraction in the grounds of Crystal Palace and were the first ever life sized sculptures of dinosaurs (and other extinct creatures) anywhere in the world. The sculptures were created at the dawn of dinosaur palaeontology, taking into account the cutting-edge science of the day. We obviously know much more now, so many of them look weird and ‘wrong’ to our eyes. From the point of view of the history of science, therefore, they are a testament to how our knowledge changes and grows with each generation. For the general viewer today, their ‘wrongness’ adds to their charm.

2) The Subway. This gorgeous subterranean space isn’t often open to the public, although the Friends of the Subway are doing an amazing job to provide occasional access days. One of the last remnants of the Crystal Palace and its associated infrastructure, the subway was the passageway between the ‘high level’ train station and the great Crystal Palace itself. The red-and-white patterned space is all that remains of the high level station, but gives an impression of the grandeur and excitement of a visit to one of the greatest spectacles of the age. 

The Subway in 2017. Photo: C.Wightwick

So, what to take to Brighton as part of my ever-expanding Cabinet of Curiosities? Well, the Ruling History Girl wasn’t very impressed a few months ago when I tried to bring a life-sized sculpture of a naked man into the Cabinet (apparently he wouldn’t fit) so I don’t suppose I can get away with a life-sized Dinosaur either. And I wouldn’t want to take them out of their natural habitat, even virtually. In designing the Dinosaurs, smaller maquettes were made, about 1/8th size of the final pieces. None of them survive, to our knowledge. But if they did, maybe I could fit one of those into the Cabinet?

Find out more at:

Crystal Palace Dinosaurs: https://cpdinosaurs.org/

The Crystal Palace Subway: www.cpsubway.org.uk

Finding George Haydon by Miranda Miller

This is my first blog for the History Girls and I'm thrilled that Mary has invited me to join you.


I've been thinking about the difference between writing about imaginary people and real ones. Are the people we invent less - or more - vivid than the historical characters we carefully research? I've just finished writing a novel called King of the Vast, which is the third volume of my Bedlam Trilogy. In the first, Nina in Utopia, a young Victorian woman finds herself in 21st century London.



When Nina returns to her own time, and talks about the wonderful future she believes she has seen, her husband, Charles, understandably thinks she is mad and has her confined to the Royal Bethlem Hospital, or Bedlam (where the Imperial War Museum is now). At this point my invented characters began to meet real people: Dr (later Sir)William Charles Hood, the humane reformer who was resident physician in the hospital in the 1850s and his friend, the Steward, George Henry Haydon. I then discovered that Richard Dadd, an artist I've always admired, would have been in the hospital at the same time as my imaginary heroine, Nina. Dadd became a minor character in the first novel and the main character in the second volume of the trilogy, The Fairy Visions of Richard Dadd.




I spent many enthralling hours doing my initial research in the archives of the Bethlem Hospital in Beckenham, in Kent, where there was also a small museum displaying the paintings and drawings of former inmates. This year it was reinvented from a prefab building to the beautiful Museum of the Mind, which is well worth visiting.


In 2011 at Tate Britain I saw a fascinating exhibition called John Martin:Apocalypse which made me decide to write a third volume about the successful Regency and early Victorian painter John Martin. This is a doppelgänger novel about his complex relationship with his brother Jonathan, who set fire to York minster because God told him to.




All three novels are set in nineteenth century London and are an attempt to explore art and madness. Each of the three is self contained, but linked by various common themes, including the hospital itself, art and time travel. I really struggled to finish King of the Vast, the final volume. I always find endings very difficult to write and the end of a trilogy poses huge problems because you have to give your readers some sense of closure, to tie the three together without being too slick about it. Jonathan Martin was an inmate in the Royal Bethlem Hospital in the 1830s and his niece Izzie visits the hospital, in my last chapter, in 1878.


The only character who spanned most of this period was the Steward, George Haydon. He had remained a shadowy character until I discovered on the internet a PhD about him by his descendant, Katherine Haydon. From this I learned that he had been to Australia, that he was married with children and lived with his family in the hospital, was interested in art and did some cartoons for Punch. In my first two novels he is an important and sympathetic character. Richard Dadd gave him his masterpiece, The Fairy Feller's Masterstroke, and in my novel Dadd, who is gay, has an unrequited crush on the Steward, who remained in the hospital from 1853-89. I wondered why such a charming and gifted man would have remained so long in the same rather dead end job.

Then, on the Bethlem Hospital website, I discovered that Haydon had a sister, Anna Maria, who was an inmate in the hospital for many years. This fact energised my fiction and also prompted a meditation on the very mysterious connections between real and imagined characters. In my head, I find, they occupy the same compartment. I'd love to know what the rest of you think about this.