The Rise & Fall of the Brighton Anthaeum

by Philip Morgan

In the 1820s, Brighton was growing at an uncontrollable speed. George IV held court at the Royal Pavilion and fortunes were being won and lost not only at the gaming tables but also from an explosion of residential development.

Henry Phillips, a bank worker turned teacher, author, botanist, landscaper and developer was a man of his time. Born in 1779 in Henfield. His first job was in a bank in Worthing. He married in 1800 and moved to Brighton. In 1815, he moved to Bayswater and opened “an academy for young gentlemen”.  Side by side with his teaching, he was writing about botany, horticulture and landscape design.  In 1822, based on this writing, he was commissioned to lay out The Level in Brighton with the architect Amon Henry Wilds.

Sensing opportunity, Henry shut his school and moved back to Brighton where he successfully hustled for commissions including The Kemptown Enclosures.

However, what he wanted to do was build the biggest conservatory in the world and in 1825 he and Amon Henry Wilds started raising money to do just that.

It was to be called the Athenaeum. The local press claimed that the gigantic conservatory “would have been without parallel in the world”. But they couldn’t raise the £20,000 they needed and Sillwood Place ended up occupying the site.

Henry was not discouraged. Sir Isaac Goldsmid, 1st Baronet, Baron de Palmeira had started the development of Adelaide Terrace.

And as he owned adjoining land Henry pitched an idea to him. To say the idea was ambitious is an understatement. His scheme, whose name “Anthaeum” meant “flower-house”, was to build the largest circular conservatory in the world, constructed entirely of iron and covered by 2 acres of glass (100,000 panes.) and occupying an area of 1.5 acres. It would house Tropical, Oriental and European trees, plants, shrubs and flowers. Inside it a lake would be dug, birds would fly and visitors amble. There would be seating for 800 people. It was to be kept at a constant temperature of 32 °C (90 °F) by burning coke from the local gasworks: a Georgian Eden Project. One-off admission a shilling, a year’s subscription one guinea (for up to three days of every week), or two guineas (for access every day). Phillips pitched this plan to Goldsmid, who liked it and invested in the project and helped Henry to secure the land and a substantial advance financial investment. Construction began! Just imagine what Henry must have felt as he saw his dream start to take physical shape in 1832.

Phillips asked Wilds to design the structure and employed C. Hollis as the chief engineer and Mr English as the building contractor. However, no single person was in overall charge, which proved a problem. Wilds’ design had a central iron pillar to support the iron ribs of the dome. However, English decided not to have a pillar and to reduce the size of the supporting structure on the roof because the foundry he owned was falling behind in the production of the specified ironwork. The proposed lack of a central pillar alarmed Wilds so much that he resigned. Hollis, the engineer, then had a row with English about the need for the pillar and also resigned. This meant there was no professional architect or engineer to oversee the project. So, English acted “much as he pleased” for three months with no apparent interventions from Henry, who perhaps wanted to open as soon as possible and start earning money. English finished the structure according to his modified design in mid-1833. It dominated the landscape from far and near.

During construction, scaffolding had held up the roof. Henry, obviously having second thoughts, asked civil engineer Sir John Rennie whether it would be safe to take this down. On the 29th, of August, 1833, two days before the Anthaeum’s public opening, English, possibly angry that his judgement was being questioned, started to take it down anyway. On the 30th, of August, 1833, an hour after he removed the last bit there was a loud crack. All the builders inside bolted. The head gardener stayed. There was a second much louder crack. He ran outside and jumped over a wall. And then, as The Times reported the following day: “The immense ribs of iron snapped asunder in ten thousand pieces; and a great part of it, from the height it fell, was buried several feet deep in the earth. The destruction of this great edifice is accounted for only by the immense weight of iron at the top, which when unsupported by the scaffolding, folded in, and forced its way to the ground”. Henry went blind from the shock.

“The friends of Horticulture will learn with regret that Mr Henry Phillips, Sen., of Brighton one of the most active supporters of The Anthaeum is now confined to Horsham Gaol. The fall of that noble structure is understood to have caused the pecuniary difficulties which led to his imprisonment. He is thus deprived of the means of supporting Mrs Phillips, and those of his family, who are dependent on him; and to add to these misfortunes, he has lately been afflicted with almost total loss of sight. He is the author of several entertaining works of Fruits, Flowers and Esculent Vegetables; and his indefatigable exertions in the service of the public certainly merited a better fate.” Sussex Advertiser 27th of January 1834.

English fled the country never to be heard of again.

When Henry died in 1840 the twisted ruins of his great project still lay undisturbed on the land that would ten years later become Palmeira Square. If he had insisted on the pillar being built The Anthaeum would probably be there now, a wonder of the world and Henry Phillips remembered as one of the great men of his time rather than as a man laid low by the combination of a dodgy builder and his own ambition.