The Great Exhibition

(lofty string music) - Well, today we're shooting the Great Exhibition of 1851.

I wasn't sure we would ever get here, but here we are.

(majestic string music) (crowd applauding) I knew we'd have to do the Great Exhibition, but I wasn't quite sure how we would manage to do it.

We've been very lucky to have Sefton Park which is not nearly as big as the original, but with a bit of digital jiggery-pokery, I think we may be able to get some sense of the real thing.

(lofty string music) - You can't build the Crystal Palace, so I think coming to the Palm House and using that which is something that's tangible, and then using the CGI to build the scale within that, that feels very organic and real.

I think that's a really great way of approaching it.

- The Palm House is Victorian, is a Victorian building and that gives us the basis for what we were looking for.

We wanted to give a little bit of scale at least in where we knew we could add to and make it look like the original place.

- It's great, I think that the way that the whole team has approached it, and their desire for scale, but a scale that you can really feel is fantastic for the shot.

- That's the sort of crowning achievement, certainly of Albert's life.

I think on the personal side, he very much wanted to leave a legacy, to do something that he would be remembered for.

- It's the eighth wonder of the world.

I'm so proud of you.

(lofty string music) - There was a need to give something to the people.

At the dawn of this new age, I think you wanted to build something that would be a symbol and an emblem of the country, but also something that everyone could appreciate in their different ways, and bring the globe to one place.

The world is getting smaller, and the aim of the Exhibition is to unite the art and industry of every nation on the Earth.

- From a sort of domestic trade fair, he turned it into a global event, and it was the most popular public event ever.

I think something like a sixth of the population went to see it, everybody who was anybody went to see what was inside the Crystal Palace.

- [Man] Mamamt Ali, the envoy from Turkey, Count Orloff, representing the Tsar.

- It was Albert's dream to bring the world to London, and Henry Cole and himself, they spend the whole episode seven of going through designs and submissions, and then at the end of it all they were approached by Joseph Paxton who proposed, basically a giant glass house.

- The idea of it was very, very unpopular, and a lot of people wanted it to fail.

- Why are the newspapers so shortsighted?

Can they not see the benefits that the Exhibition will bring?

- They said they wanted-- - Yeah.

- you had to keep the trees so they couldn't clear a huge space for it, so they needed this genius solution, which just hadn't come.

- So if the building is to begin there, it would reach beyond those trees.

- Indeed sir, way beyond the trees.

- And then the submission came from this man-- - An enormous greenhouse-- - The genius-- - Just absolutely vast.

A greenhouse to the gods.

- A Crystal Palace.

- What is so amazing about the Great Exhibition, is that if you walk around it you'll see that there are some stalls selling Cadbury's Milk Chocolate, Schweppes drinks, there's a W.H.

Smiths kind of newspaper stall, and that's all correct, all those concessions were there.

You know, I wanted to include things like that to make people realize we're not that far away from the Great Exhibition in some ways, there are still connections to that time.

(upbeat string music) - What the Great Exhibition is, it's kind of everything.

It's showcasing amazing scientific advances of the day, as well as absolutely ridiculous things that we would consider quite theatrical and possibly circus-like.

- You've got really weird stuff, like a collection of stuffed frogs, who are arranged as a string quartet, you know?

Or a kitten wedding.

And then in another place they had a stuffed elephant.

It's a kind of really bizarre, and extraordinary, and amazing, and very Victorian collection of really quite miscellaneous stuff, but amazing.

- From our point of view in the art department, it's very colorful, it's very big in its scale.

We just want to show a little bit of everything, from a modern view it can look a bit strange, and almost a bit tacky, but that's what the Victorians were like, they liked the show and the color, and the glamour of the whole thing.

(upbeat string music) - My husband has a vision for a country that leads by competition rather than conflict.

A vision that trusts in the very best part of human nature.

Not the worst.

- The money for the Great Exhibition was put into a fund which built the V&A, the Science Museum, the Natural History Museum, the Royal College of Organists, the Royal College of Design, the Albert Memorial, the Albert Hall, so that sort of whole area of South Kensington, which is called Albertopolis, was all funded by the tickets that were bought to that exhibition.

Not a cent of public money went into it either, so it was like that kind of classic example of Victorian enterprise, and ingenuity and entrepreneurship.

- This electrical plating is a chance for a great work to be within the reach of the common man.

- The thing that Albert really brought to it was that he decided it should be a global exhibition and there should be things coming in from around the world, so it was a celebration of free trade and of the links between nations and friendly relation between the countries of the world.

And I think that's a message that meant a lot then and means a lot now.

[Crowd] God save Prince Albert, God save Prince Albert, God save Prince Albert, God save Prince Albert!

(crowd cheering) (triumphant string music)