Festival of Britain
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The Festival of Britain was a national exhibition which opened in London and around Britain in May 1951. The official opening was on 3 May.[1] The principal exhibition site was on the South Bank Site, London of the River Thames near Waterloo Station. Other exhibitions were held in Poplar, East London (Architecture), South Kensington (Science) and the Kelvin Hall in Glasgow (Industrial Power) as well as travelling exhibitions that toured Britain by land and sea. Outside London major festivals took place in Cardiff, Stratford-upon-Avon, Bath, Perth, Bournemouth, York, Aldeburgh, Inverness, Cheltenham, Oxford and other centres.[2]
At that time, shortly after the end of World War II, much of London was still in ruins and redevelopment was badly needed. The Festival was an attempt to give Britons a feeling of recovery and progress and to promote better-quality design in the rebuilding of British towns and cities following the war. The Festival also celebrated the centenary of the 1851 Great Exhibition. It was the brainchild of Gerald Barry and the Labour Deputy Leader Herbert Morrison who described it as "a tonic for the nation".
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[edit] The South Bank
Construction of the South Bank site opened up a new public space, including a riverside walkway, where previously there had been warehouses and working-class housing. There was, however, opposition to the project from those who believed that the money (£8 million) would have been better spent on housing. (An Ealing Studios film was made about working-class resistance to the demolition that the festival required and featured a London family barricading themselves into their terraced house to prevent it being demolished to make way for the Festival of Britain. The house is finally saved when red-faced Whitehall bureaucrats decide to feature it in the Festival as a “typical English home”).
In 1948, the young architect Hugh Casson, 38, was appointed director of architecture for the Festival and he broadmindedly sought to appoint other young architects to design its buildings. He was knighted in 1952 for his efforts in relation to the Festival.
The layout of the South Bank site was intended by the organisers to showcase the principles of urban design that would feature in the post-war rebuilding of London and the creation of the new towns. These included multiple levels of buildings, elevated walkways and avoidance of a street grid. Most of the South Bank buildings were International Modernist in style, little seen in Britain before the war. All except the Royal Festival Hall were later destroyed by the incoming Churchill government in 1953, who thought them too 'socialist' for their taste. [3]
[edit] Design and the Festival buildings
The graphic designer for the Festival of Britain was Abram Games who had been Official War Poster artist and whose iconic Britannia symbol of the Festival remains memorable.
The main South Bank site buildings and their architects were:
- Dome of Discovery, which anticipated the Millennium Dome (designed by Ralph Tubbs)
- Skylon, an unusual cigar-shaped aluminium-clad steel tower supported by cables (designed by Hidalgo Moya and Philip Powell).
- An old Shot Tower (built 1826)
- Transport, designed by Arcon
- Festival Administration Building, by Maxwell Fry, Jane Drew and Edward Mills
- The Lion and the Unicorn pavilion celebrating the history of the British nation (designed by R.D. Russell, R.Y. Gooden and Richard Guyatt)
- Land of Britain, by H.T. Cadbury Brown
- Minerals of the Land, by the Architects Co-Partnership
- Power & Production, by George Grenfell Baines and Felix Samuely
- Sea and Ships, by Basil Spence
- The Royal Festival Hall
- The Telekinema, a cinema designed by Wells Coates and programmed by the British Film Institute. It was the basis of the National Film Theatre
- A mural painted by the British Modernist artist John Tunnard
- A mosaic designed by Victor Passmore
- Sculptures by Barbara Hepworth.
Misha Black, one of the Festival architects, said that the Festival created a wide audience for architectural modernism but that it was common currency among professional architects and that the design of the Festival was not innovative. The architects also tried to show by their design and layout of the South Bank Festival what could be achieved by applying modern town planning ideas.[4]
A public housing estate in Poplar, named the Lansbury Estate after George Lansbury, was also built as part of the festival, and is still extant. There is a church called Trinity Independent Chapel, a public house named The Festive Briton (and now called Callaghans) in a corner of Chrisp Street Market, also part of the estate, with The Festival Inn nearby.
Trowell, a village in Nottinghamshire, was selected from among 1600 others to be the "Festival Village" as a typical example of British rural life. Trowell also has a "Festival Inn".
Also as part of the Festival in London, a new wing was built for the Science Museum, to hold the Exhibition of Science, and a so-called FunFair (actually an amusement park) and "Pleasure Gardens" – with attractions such as a Fountain Lake, a "Grotto", a "Tree Walk", and the Guinness Festival Clock – were constructed in Battersea Park. Parliament Square was redesigned as well.
[edit] Attendance figures
There were over 10,000,000 paid admissions to the 6 main exhibitions in 5 months:
- Architecture Exhibition, Lansbury/Poplar (London): 86,646
- Industrial Power Exhibition, Glasgow: 282,039
- Science Exhibition, South Kensington (London): 213,744
- South Bank Exhibition, Waterloo (London): 8,455,863
- Visitors from London 36.5%
- Outside London 56%
- Overseas 7.5%
- USA 15%
- Commonwealth 32%
- Europe 46%
- Elsewhere 7%
- Land Travelling Exhibition: 462,289
- Manchester 114,183
- Leeds 144,844
- Birmingham 76,357
- Nottingham 106,615
- Festival Ship "Campania": 889,792
- Southampton 78,683
- Dundee 51,422
- Newcastle 169,511
- Hull 87,840
- Plymouth 50,120
- Bristol (Avonmouth) 78,219
- Cardiff 104,391
- Belfast 86,756
- Birkenhead 90,311
- Glasgow 93,539
- Festival Pleasure Gardens, Battersea (London): 8,031,000
- Visitors from London 76%,
- Outside London 22%
- Overseas 2%
- Ulster Farm & Factory Exhibition, Belfast: 156,760
- Living Traditions Exhibition, Edinburgh: 135,000
- Exhibition of Books, South Kensington (London): 63,162
[edit] Events associated with the Festival
- The Festival ship Campania took a travelling version of the South Bank exhibition to several ports from May to October: Southampton, Dundee, Newcastle, Hull, Plymouth, Bristol, Cardiff, Belfast, Birkenhead and Glasgow.[5]
- The Festival was the first time that steelpan music had been played in Britain, thanks to the Trinidad All Steel Percussion Orchestra.
- An exhibition of sculptures organised by the Arts Council in Battersea Park brought Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth to wider public notice.
- There were two exhibitions at the Whitechapel Art Gallery as part of the Festival Programme: a display on the History of East London and a show of craft and popular art forms.
- A commemorative British crown coin (5 shillings in the money of the time) was also minted with a striking of over 2 million, and it remains inexpensive.
- World premiere of Ferde Grofé's Atlantic Suite, also conducted by Grofé. It was Grofé's first time abroad since 1923.
[edit] Images of the Festival of Britain
Several images of the South Bank Exhibition can be found on the internet[6] while a filmed retrospective view of the 1951 Festival of Britain on the South Bank, with special reference to design and architecture and entitled Brief City (1952), was made by Massingham Productions Ltd. for the British Government as a public information film. It can also be seen at the Internet Archive[7]
The Festival was also filmed by documentary-maker Humphrey Jennings, as Family Portrait and it is featured in scenes in the feature films Prick Up Your Ears and 84 Charing Cross Road.
[edit] Legacy
Although the Festival was popular and made a profit, Winston Churchill was contemptuous of it and the first act of his newly-elected government in October 1951 was an instruction to clear the South Bank site, although the Festival exhibition was scheduled to close at the end of September anyway. Profits from the Festival were retained by the London County Council and were used to convert the Royal Festival Hall into a concert hall and to establish The South Bank. The 221B Baker Street exhibit of Sherlock Holmes apartment is still displayed in a pub near Charing Cross railway station.
The Guide Book to the Festival described its legacy in these words: "It will leave behind not just a record of what we have thought of ourselves in the year 1951 but, in a fair community founded where once there was a slum, in an avenue of trees or in some work of art, a reminder of what we have done to write this single, adventurous year into our national and local history."
The "Festival Style", combining modernism with whimsy and Englishness, influenced architecture, interior design, product design and typography in the 1950s. William Feaver describes the Festival Style as "Braced legs, indoor plants, lily-of-the valley sprays of lightbulbs, aluminium lattices, Costswold-type walling with picture windows, flying staircases, blond wood, the thorn, the spike, the molecule."[8] It was manifested in the New Towns, coffee bars and office blocks of the fifties. (A 1951 office building at 219 Oxford Street, London, incorporated images of the Festival on its facade.) The Festival style was ultimately manifested in the design of Coventry Cathedral (1962), by a Festival architect, Basil Spence. Many architects, especially those working for local government, enthusiastically copied its forms and materials but without too much consideration of their durability, resulting in a stock of buildings that have since been much criticized. The design writer Reyner Banham has questioned the originality and the Englishness of the Festival Style and indeed the extent of its influence.[9]
[edit] Books
- Banham, Mary and Hillier, Bevis, A Tonic to the Nation: The Festival of Britain 1951, London: Thames & Hudson, 1976 ISBN 0500270791
- Rennie, Paul, Festival of Britain 1951, London: Antique Collectors Club, Ltd., 2007 ISBN 9781851495337 ISBN 1851495339
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Contemporary account of start of festival.
- ^ The Festival of Britain (Official Book of the Festival of Britain 1951). HMSO, 1951.
- ^ BBC Radio 4 programme, 8-9pm. 9th June 2007
- ^ A Tonic to the Nation
- ^ The Festival of Britain (Official Book of the Festival of Britain 1951). HMSO, 1951.
- ^ Designing Britain
- ^ Brief City
- ^ William Feaver, "Festival Star" in Mary Banham and Bevis Hillier, A Tonic to the Nation: The Festival of Britain 1951, London, Thames and Hudson, 1976 ISBN 0 500 01165 6
- ^ Reyner Banham, "The Style: 'Flimsy ... Effeminate'?" in Mary Banham and Bevis Hillier, A Tonic to the Nation: The Festival of Britain 1951, London, Thames and Hudson, 1976 ISBN 0 500 01165 6
[edit] External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Festival of Britain |
- George Simner, "Festival of Britain", The Observer
- Festival of Britain, e-learning module by the Design Council Archives
- The Festival of Britain
- Festival of Britain exhibit from the Museum of London
- The Festival of Britain Society
- The Festival of Britain - Exploring 20th century London
- http://www.flickr.com/groups/southbankcentre/ (A Flickr group dedicated to pictures of the Southbank Centre)
- Video of a talk by Robert Anderson on the development of the Exhibition of Science as part of the Festival of Britain
- Internet Archive Films:
- History of the Royal Festival Hall
