WATKIN’S TOWER

or Trains, Towers and Turkish Baths

STORY: DAVID YOUNG IMAGES: OPEN SOURCE

Sir Edward Watkin loved a good train. He loved them so much that, after spending time in Canada and the USA, he wrote a book about the railways of that continent. I haven’t read it, (my research was never thorough) but I bet it’s a belter. Back in the UK, he eventually became a director of the GWR. And he was so good at being a director that, by 1881, he was director of nine railways.

Sir Edward Watkin loved travelling on trains, especially his own ones. I daresay that he would proudly proclaim to unsuspecting passengers, “This is my railway. Great, innit? I own this.” (No proof of this – just more incomplete research.)

Sir Edward Watkin, as director of the Metropolitan Railway, liked to make the journey from Baker Street to Harrow. There, sometime in the 1880s, he would gaze out of the window at the lovely little villages along the way. And who amongst us has not shared in the joy of passing through Dollis Hill and Neasden, particularly as the Metropolitan doesn’t stop at them?

The village of Wembley, surrounded by green fields, appeared to him particularly pretty, yet it was in some way lacking. The thought nagged at Watkin, needling him every time that his train rattled through, until the thought struck him. “Bless me for a silly sausage,” he thought. “It needs a giant tower, that’s what it needs, a bit bigger than the one in Paris.”

You may call him a dreamer, particularly if I mention that he’d already ditched a plan for a tunnel under the Channel in 1881. He had thought that he might thus run his trains into Paris, but it never happened. But a giant tower in Wembley? – now that sounds like a very good idea indeed.

Sir Edward Watkin wanted to tempt people onto his trains, to inspire them to travel. Beyond London lay the unspoiled beauty of the countryside, out in Buckinghamshire, or nearer at hand around Willesden and Kilburn. And there was Wembley, lovely Wembley. If there could be a giant tower, then the public would be daft if they did not come.

He bought some land, and planned for an amusement park, with lakes and gardens and stalls, and there, at the heart of it, thrusting towards the heavens, a great big colossal tower. A station was built for the crowds that would eventually come, and was called Wembley Park in anticipation of the scheme.

As Gustave Eiffel didn’t fancy the project, a competition was held to discover a design. Fanciful ideas flew about. A spiral railway climbing the exterior of the tower. A tower that leaned - a bit like a leaning tower I guess. Amazingly, these ideas did not win the contract. That privilege went to an eight-legged 1200-foot metal tower, complete with theatres, exhibitions, and, obviously, several Turkish baths and the occasional dance hall. Finally, because this was the modern world, there would be electrical lighting.

To build it, there had to be a company, so Sir Edward Watkin made one of his own, the International Tower Construction Company. These days, to make it funkier, we might have spelt Tower without the E. An attempt to win public funding was unsuccessful, so four of the eight legs were discarded. Anyway, four legs are better than eight.

Work began in 1892, and, nearby, boating lakes and cricket pitches were prepared. The first stage was well under way in 1894 when the public were first allowed to visit. It was very successful. By 1895, the tower had squirmed its way to a height of 154 feet. That’s about 2 trees, for those that prefer their heights measured in trees. Or 24 fridges. It was behind schedule. Sir Edward Watkin was in poor health. Worse was to come. The decision to go with four legs had rendered the structure unstable. The company went into liquidation, maybe because they left the E in Tower, Sir Edward Watkin died, the tower was closed to the public and, in 1907, was demolished with dynamite. The Wembley dream did not vanish with the unfinished tower, or Towr, or ‘stump’ as I prefer to call it. Sports clubs flourished, housing developments sprung up, and, in 1924, the British Empire Exhibition brought further life to the area. There was even a huge sports stadium built, whose name I failed to research, though I think that it had ‘Wembley’ in its name. It may still be there, for all that I know, but it’s probably called Wmbly.