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111-733: Jezebel is a Dennis N-Type fire engine that was one of a batch of ten vehicles ordered in October 1915 by the London County Council for the London Fire Brigade . It was delivered in April 1916 and initially based Vauxhall, but sometime around 1919 was moved to Pageants Wharf Fire Station, Rotherhithe Street, London. In 1932, the London Fire Brigade upgraded to new appliances and Jezebel

222-457: A curtain wall system that allowed the hanging of vertical bays of glass from cantilevered beams. The Lily House was built specifically to house the Victoria amazonica waterlily which had recently been discovered by European botanists; the first specimen to reach England was originally kept at Kew Gardens , but it did not do well. Paxton's reputation as a gardener was so high by that time that he

333-510: A 6-cylinder Cummins engine mounted forward of the axle. Previous models had used Gardner engines. The fire engineering division was closed and requirements contracted out to Carmichael in Worcester. At this time Dennis claimed 65 per cent of the fire engine market. John Dennis of the founders' family, previously coach and truck sales manager, left and set up John Dennis Coachbuilders to build complete fire engine bodies. The remaining business

444-472: A comparable size. His submission was budgeted at a remarkably low £85,800. By comparison, this was about 2 + 1 ⁄ 2 times more than the Great Stove at Chatsworth but it was only 28% of the estimated cost of Turner's design, and it promised a building which, with a footprint of over 770,000 square feet (18 acres; 7.2 ha), would cover roughly 25 times the ground area of its progenitor. Impressed by

555-410: A controversial issue that had been a major sticking point for the vocal anti-exhibition lobby. Paxton's modular, hierarchical design reflected his practical brilliance as a designer and problem-solver. It incorporated many breakthroughs, offered practical advantages that no conventional building of that era could match and, above all, it embodied the spirit of British innovation and industrial might that

666-610: A description of the dinosaurs was entitled: 'Geology and Inhabitants of the Ancient World. Described by Richard Owen , FRS. The animals constructed by B.W. Hawkins , FGS'. In the central transept was the 4,000-piece Grand Orchestra built around the 4,500-pipe Great Organ. There was a concert room with over 4,000 seats that hosted successful Handel Festivals for many years and August Manns's Crystal Palace Concerts from 1855 until 1901. The performance spaces hosted concerts, exhibits, and public entertainment. Many famous people visited

777-530: A double-deck Lance and single-deck Lancet. The Dennis Ace, a smaller twenty-seater bus was brought into production in 1933 using the chassis of Dennis's small lorry. The Arrow Minor followed in 1935 and a new Falcon chassis in 1938. John and Raymond Dennis built 223 houses for their workers, 102 of them on a 20 acres estate in Woodbridge Hill for their Coventry motor workers who brought production of White & Poppe engines to Guildford in 1933. The area took on

888-794: A former Minister of Aviation, joined the board as did a new CEO and a new finance director. The workforce of 1,300 was cut by 150, mostly white-collar workers. A banker was added to the directorate. At King's suggestion Dennis Motor Holdings , was formed on 15 January 1970 as a holding company with all part-time directors. In June the chairman announced much greater losses in the subsequent half year but he remained optimistic. They listed their products as: commercial vehicles, fire engines, refuse collection vehicles and aircraft tractors. In 1971/72, Dennis sold 101 houses in Slyfield 's Woking Road and in Midleton Road, Dennisville . In March 1972 Hestair made

999-419: A grid 77 modules long by 19 modules wide. As each module was self-supporting, Paxton was able to leave out modules in some areas, creating larger square or rectangular spaces within the building to accommodate larger exhibits. On the lower level, these larger spaces were covered by the floor above, and on the upper level by longer spans of roofing, but the dimensions of these larger spaces were always multiples of

1110-514: A grid of cast iron beams, which was held up on slim cast iron pillars. The resulting cube, with a floor area of 24 feet (7.3 m) by 24 feet (7.3 m), formed the basic structural module of the building. By multiplying these modules into a grid, the structure could be extended virtually indefinitely. In its original form, the ground level of the Crystal Palace (in plan) measured 1,848 feet (563 m) by 456 feet (139 m), which equates to

1221-481: A horizontally mounted diesel engine and Paxit all-enclosed mechanical rear-loading refuse-collection vehicles. Rolls-Royce diesel engines replaced Dennis petrol engines in the fire engines during 1951. New show vehicles in 1952 included a 5½ litre Centaur chassis with platform body, a Pax chassis with tipping gear and a lightweight body and the Stork chassis. The AV1, a new diesel ambulance chassis, returned ambulances to

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1332-602: A key inspiration. Paxton left his meeting with Cole on 9 June 1850 fired with enthusiasm. He immediately went to Hyde Park, where he walked the site earmarked for the Exhibition. Two days later on 11 June, while attending a board meeting of the Midland Railway , Paxton made his original concept drawing, which he doodled onto a sheet of pink blotting paper . This rough sketch (now in the Victoria and Albert Museum ) incorporated all

1443-490: A major gamble for Paxton, but circumstances were in his favour: he enjoyed a stellar reputation as a garden designer and builder, he was confident that his design was perfectly suited to the brief, and the commission was under pressure to choose a design and get it built, with the exhibition opening less than a year away. In the event, Paxton's design fulfilled and surpassed all the requirements, and it proved to be vastly faster and cheaper to build than any other form of building of

1554-668: A new 125,000 square foot Dennis Eagle plant on the Heathcote Industrial Estate in Warwick opened, taking over the building of Dennis municipal vehicle chassis and the matching Eagle bodies. Construction of chassis for buses and coaches as well as fire appliances remained at Guildford but that factory lost 600 jobs. Building of fire appliance bodies was moved to Carmichael Fire in Worcester and all cabs to Duple at Blackpool . The re-organisation cost around £4 million covered by

1665-468: A problem with sparrows becoming a nuisance, and shooting was out of the question inside a glass building. Queen Victoria mentioned this problem to the Duke of Wellington , who offered the solution, " Sparrowhawks , Ma'am". Paxton was acclaimed worldwide for his achievement and was knighted by Queen Victoria in recognition of his work. The project was engineered by William Cubitt ; Paxton's construction partner

1776-438: A property named Penge Place, which had been excised from Penge Common at the top of Sydenham Hill . The reconstruction of the Crystal Palace began on Sydenham Hill in 1852. The new building, while incorporating most of the constructional parts of the original one at Hyde Park, was so completely different in form as to be properly considered a quite different structure – a ' Beaux-arts ' form in glass and metal. The main gallery

1887-520: A reasonable number of bays had been completed, the columns for the upper floor were erected (longer shear-legs were used for this, but the operation was essentially the same as for the ground floor). Once the ground floor structure was complete, the final assembly of the upper floor followed rapidly. For the glazing, Paxton used larger versions of machines he had originally devised for the Great Stove at Chatsworth, installing on-site production line systems, powered by steam engines, that dressed and finished

1998-414: A self-supporting shell standing on slim iron columns, with no internal structural walls whatsoever. Because it was covered almost entirely in glass, it also needed no artificial lighting during the day, thereby reducing the exhibition's running costs. Full-size elm trees growing in the park were enclosed within the central exhibition hall near the 27-foot (8 m) tall Crystal Fountain. However this caused

2109-478: A significant block of shareholders dissatisfied with the performance of their business asked that Dennis Brothers cease production and liquidate its assets. The disputes ended when the rebels were unable to find a buyer for the Dennis business at an acceptable price. Major changes were made to management and to the directorate. The following year turnover grew again and profits seemed to have made improvement. New capital

2220-535: A standby design of its own, for a brick building in the rundbogenstil (round-arch style) by Donaldson, featuring a sheet-iron dome designed by Tunnel, but it was widely criticized and ridiculed when it was published in the newspapers. Adding to the committee's woes, the site for the exhibition was still not confirmed. The preferred site was in Hyde Park, adjacent to Princes Gate near Pennington Road, but other sites considered included Wormwood Scrubs , Battersea Park ,

2331-625: A successful takeover bid for Dennis Motor Holdings. It took effect in May 1972. With Dennis came 35 acres of sprawling red brick factory on the Guildford by-pass. Hestair announced it intended to sell surplus land. Hestair was a new industrial investment vehicle managed by David Hargreaves. It had purchased street sweeper bodybuilder Yorkshire Vehicles and dustcart bodybuilder Eagle Engineering in 1971. Hestair's other interests were agricultural engineering, toys and employment bureaux. Dennis Motor Holdings

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2442-583: A week. Thanks to the simplicity of Paxton's design and the combined efficiency of the building contractor and their suppliers, the entire structure was assembled with extraordinary speed: a team of 80 men could fix more than 18,000 panes of sheet glass in a week, and the building was completed and ready to receive exhibits in just five months. According to a study by John Gardner of Anglia Ruskin University , published in The International Journal for

2553-769: Is not known. The event made a surplus of £186,000 (equivalent to £25,720,000), money which was used to found the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Science Museum and the Natural History Museum in South Kensington . The Crystal Palace had the first major installation of public toilets , the Retiring Rooms , in which sanitary engineer George Jennings installed his "Monkey Closet" flushing lavatory (initially just for men but later catering for women also). During

2664-528: Is still in use as Crystal Palace , while the only remains of the High Level station are the subway under the Parade with its Italian mosaic roofing, a Grade II* listed building . The South Gate is served by Penge West railway station . For some time this station was on an atmospheric railway . This is often confused with a 550-metre pneumatic passenger railway which was exhibited at the Crystal Palace in 1864, which

2775-547: The Chance Brothers . The 990,000-square-foot building with its 128-foot-high ceiling was completed in thirty-nine weeks. The Crystal Palace boasted the greatest area of glass ever seen in a building. It astonished visitors with its clear walls and ceilings that did not require interior lights. It has been suggested that the name of the building resulted from a piece penned by the playwright Douglas Jerrold , who in July 1850 wrote in

2886-557: The Isle of Dogs , Victoria Park , and Regent's Park . Opponents of the scheme lobbied strenuously against the use of Hyde Park (and they were strongly supported by The Times ). The most outspoken critic was Charles Sibthorp ; he denounced the exhibition as "one of the greatest humbugs, frauds and absurdities ever known," and his trenchant opposition to both the exhibition and its building continued even after it had closed. At this point, renowned gardener Joseph Paxton became interested in

2997-456: The Palm House, Kew Gardens , and the other by French architect Hector Horeau but despite the great number of submissions, the committee rejected them all. Turner was furious at the rejection and reportedly badgered the commissioners for months afterwards, seeking compensation, but at an estimated £300,000, his design (like Horeau's) was too expensive. As a last resort, the committee came up with

3108-626: The Rodboro Buildings . This was the first purpose-built motor vehicle factory in Britain. Their range of cars was quickly extended to 12 hp, 14 hp, 16 and 20 hp chassis fitted with tourer, town car and limousine bodies. From the Dennis Brothers stand at the 1903 Crystal Palace Motor Show the brothers sold almost £30,000 worth of cars and took many more orders. Larger models followed their first light cars. A 35 hp model in 1906

3219-484: The 1967 film The Jokers , directed by Michael Winner . Dennis Specialist Vehicles Dennis Specialist Vehicles was an English manufacturer of commercial vehicles based in Guildford , building buses , fire engines , lorries (trucks) and municipal vehicles such as dustcarts . All vehicles were made to order to the customer's requirements and more strongly built than mass production equivalents. For most of

3330-509: The 20th century the Dennis company was Guildford's main employer. Following a decade of financial difficulties original shareholders sold out in 1972 and Dennis's ownership has since passed through quite a number of hands. The Woodbridge site was sold and a new small factory built in Slyfield remains in use by lineal business descendant, bus-maker Alexander Dennis . No Dennis haulage trucks have been built since 1985. The last Dennis fire engine left

3441-641: The 300 series and 425 Integral followed parts and service to Plaxton later. Plaxton took the Duple sites in London, Blackpool and Glasgow to enlarge their spares and repairs network. Dennis and Duple had developed the Dart , a midibus bought by London Transport as a one-man operated bus to replace their AEC Routemasters . At the end of 1989 Dart bodywork production moved from the closed Duple to Carlyle Works in Birmingham. The Dart

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3552-416: The Dennis product line-up during 1954. The next year an updated heavy fire engine chassis received Rolls-Royce fully automatic gearboxes. They were not yet in production but Dennis revealed their plans for new Loline model doubledeck buses at the end of 1956. Built with Dennis components they used a patented Bristol Lodekka chassis. The Dennis version was for the independent section of the market Bristol

3663-506: The Great Exhibition was intended to celebrate. The geometry of the Crystal Palace was a classic example of the concept of form following manufacturer's limitations: the shape and size of the whole building was directly based around the size of the panes of glass made by the supplier, Chance Brothers of Smethwick . These were the largest available at the time, measuring 10 inches (25 cm) wide by 49 inches (120 cm) long. Because

3774-616: The Guildford factory in 2007. The Dennis brand is still used on Alexander Dennis buses, Dennis Eagle dustcarts and Dennis mowers. Dennis Brothers was founded in 1895 by brothers John Cawsey Dennis (1871–1939) and (Herbert) Raymond Dennis (1878–1939) who made Speed King bicycles. They built the bicycles, initially from bought-in parts, and sold them from their shop, The Universal Athletic Stores, in High Street, Guildford . They made their first motor vehicle in 1898, and in 1899, their first car, The Dennis Light Doctor's Car . Though shown at

3885-527: The History of Engineering & Technology, the speed of the erection work was thanks to the use, for the first time, of nuts and bolts made to what was later to be known as the British Standard Whitworth (BSW), when up to that time nuts and bolts were made individually, and could not be interchanged. When completed, the Crystal Palace provided an unrivalled space for exhibits, since it was essentially

3996-460: The Iraqis with him were hanged. He was not released until February 1988. Phoenix was added as a brand name to all Dennis Eagle refuse collectors during 1978. The Delta 1600 series trucks were launched, middleweight 16 tonne vehicles for tipper and haulage applications. In February 1983, Hestair Dennis purchased Duple Coachbuilders . Between the two Hestair could produce complete vehicles with

4107-535: The National Cycle Show this car was never put into production. After incorporating Dennis Brothers Limited, in which they were given generous financial support by local cyclists and potential motorists, the brothers began car production around 1901. John Dennis built a 30,000 square foot three storey plus basement building in Onslow Street in the centre of Guildford with a lift between floors later known as

4218-530: The Vehicle Division, led the management buyout and was appointed chairman and CEO. The stated intention was to relist the Dennis group back on the London Stock Exchange . Hestair Specialist Vehicles Limited was renamed Specialist Vehicles Limited on 7 March 1989. Duple Coachbuilders was closed down in July 1989 with 350 jobs lost. The parts and service business went to Plaxton , production of

4329-451: The apex of the shear, the navvies hoisted the columns, girders and other parts into place. As soon as two adjacent columns had been erected, a girder was hoisted into place between them and bolted onto the connectors. The columns were erected in opposite pairs, then two more girders were connected to form a self-supporting square—this was the basic frame of each module. The shears would then be moved along and an adjoining bay constructed. When

4440-420: The basic 24 feet (7.3 m) by 24 feet (7.3 m) grid unit. The modules were also strong enough to be stacked vertically, enabling Paxton to add an upper floor that nearly doubled the amount of available exhibition space. The first floor galleries were double the height of the ground floor galleries below, and the Crystal Palace could theoretically have accommodated a full second-floor gallery, but this space

4551-446: The basic features of the finished building, and it is a mark of Paxton's ingenuity and industriousness that detailed plans, calculations and costings were ready to submit in less than two weeks. (The statue of Albert, Prince Consort , in Perth, Scotland , was sculpted with the subject holding a plan of the Crystal Palace. The statue was unveiled by Queen Victoria in 1864. ) The project was

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4662-503: The building parts. These included a machine that mechanically grooved the wooden window sash bars and a painting machine that automatically dipped the parts in paint and then passed them through a series of rotating brushes to remove the excess. The last major components to be put into place were the 16 semi-circular ribs of the vaulted transept, which were the only major structural parts that were made of wood. These were raised into position as eight pairs, and all were fixed into place within

4773-430: The business may be gauged from the regular expansions on their new site at Woodbridge Hill on the outskirts of Guildford — in 1907, 1910, 1912 and 1913. In 1913 Dennis Brothers moved their main operations to a new much larger building of almost four acres on the twelve-acre site at Woodbridge leaving their purpose-built Onslow Street premises solely for repairs. In March 1913 the investing public learnt that Dennis Brothers

4884-459: The buyer to release the vehicle to the War Office in time of war. Materials had been ordered but no subvention lorries completed when the situation changed. After August 1914's outbreak of hostilities production was reduced to the subvention type 3-ton military lorries, now supplied directly to the War Office, and the Dennis turbine fire engine. The Ministry of Munitions took complete control of

4995-417: The cast iron columns, which also had an ingenious dual function: each was cast with a hollow core, allowing it to double as a concealed down-pipe that carried the storm-water down into the drains beneath the building. One of the few issues Paxton could not completely solve was leaks—when completed, rain was found to be leaking into the huge building in over a thousand places. The leaks were sealed with putty, but

5106-533: The clock and the number of workers doubled to 4,000. British Road Services , Britain's state-owned road haulage operator, didn't buy any trucks from Dennis. New products were developed but were not attractive to BRS. The suppliers to BRS were prospering, Leyland , AEC and Foden's technical advances and greater truck experience let them build even better buses to compete with Dennis buses. Only Dennis's light Pax trucks sold well and they went to businesses still permitted to run their own short-distance transport. Yet

5217-414: The company's buses and fire engines remained in demand. The 1940s and 1950s still managed to be Dennis's best years. The 1950s saw the introduction of diesel engines and automatic transmissions and bus engines were moved below floors to increase carrying capacity. After the war bus production began again. 1950 introductions were a passenger chassis named Dominant with a semi-automatic transmission and

5328-444: The design and construction of the exhibition building, comprising accomplished engineers Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Robert Stephenson , renowned architects Charles Barry and Thomas Leverton Donaldson , and chaired by William Cubitt . By 15 March 1850 they were ready to invite submissions which had to conform to several key specifications: the building had to be temporary, simple, as cheap as possible, and economical to build within

5439-460: The development of powered cranes ; the raising of the columns was done manually using shear legs (or shears), a simple crane mechanism. These consisted of two strong poles which were set several meters apart at the base and then lashed together at the top to form a triangle; this was stabilized and kept vertical by guy ropes fixed to the apex, stretched taut and tied to stakes driven into the ground some distance away. Using pulleys and ropes hung from

5550-696: The eastern portion in Beckenham, Kent. When built, most of the buildings were in the County of Surrey, as were the majority of grounds, but in 1899 the county boundary was moved, transferring the entire site to Penge Urban District in Kent. The site is now within the Crystal Palace & Anerley Ward of the London Borough of Bromley . Two railway stations were opened to serve the permanent exhibition: The Low Level station

5661-455: The entire building was scaled around those dimensions, it meant that nearly the whole outer surface could be glazed using hundreds of thousands of identical panes, thereby drastically reducing both their production cost and the time needed to install them. The original Hyde Park building was essentially a vast, flat-roofed rectangular hall. A huge open gallery ran along the main axis, with wings extending down either side. The main exhibition space

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5772-414: The exhibition, 827,280 visitors each paid one penny to use them. It is often suggested that the euphemism " spending a penny " originated at the exhibition, but the phrase is more likely to date from the 1890s when public lavatories, fitted with penny-coin-operated locks, were first established by British local authorities. The Great Exhibition closed on 15 October 1851. The life of the Great Exhibition

5883-451: The fluctuations of demand experienced by the overall economy. Buyers tend to replace them at fixed periods so there is an element of longer term planning. While it is a relatively small market it is stable. Motor mowers were added in 1922. White and Poppe in Coventry had always supplied engines for Dennis Brothers motor vehicles. A takeover had been under consideration before the war but it

5994-409: The form of a long triangular prism, which made it both extremely light and very strong, and meant it could be built with the minimum amount of materials. Paxton set the dimensions of this prism by using the length of single pane of glass (49 inches (120 cm)) as the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle, thereby creating a triangle with a length-to-height ratio of 2.5:1, whose base (adjacent side)

6105-508: The home country and the empire. France was the largest foreign contributor. The exhibits were grouped into four main categories—Raw Materials, Machinery, Manufacturers and Fine Arts. The exhibits ranged from the Koh-i-Noor diamond, Sèvres porcelain , and music organs to a massive hydraulic press, and a fire engine. There was also a 27-foot tall Crystal Fountain. In the first week, the prices were £1; they were then reduced to five shillings for

6216-491: The industrial tractor manufacturer Mercury Truck & Tractor Company , also Mercury Airfield Equipment that manufactured airport tugs and later baggage trailers and ground units, and Mercury Snow Control. Potential passenger customers preferred their new vehicles front-entrance and rear-engined and Dennis had no bus in production to meet those requirements. Dennis chose to end bus manufacture in 1965 and concentrate on lorries which also faced declining demand. In late 1965

6327-468: The interior and grounds of the building. Within two years the rebuilt Crystal Palace was complete, and on 10 June 1854, Queen Victoria again performed an opening ceremony, in the presence of 40,000 guests. Several localities claim to be the area to which the building was moved. The street address of the Crystal Palace was Sydenham (SE26) after 1917, but the actual building and parklands were mostly in Penge with

6438-536: The light coming into the building, and acted as a primitive evaporative cooling system when water was sprayed onto them. The other part of the solution was Paxton's ingenious ventilation system. Each of the modules that formed the outer walls of the building was fitted with a prefabricated set of louvres that could be opened and closed using a gear mechanism, allowing hot stale air to escape. The flooring consisted of boards 22 centimetres (8.7 in) wide which were spaced about 1 centimetre (0.39 in) apart; together with

6549-427: The louvres, this formed an effective passive air-conditioning system. Because of the pressure differential, the hot air escaping from the louvres generated a constant airflow that drew cooler air up through the gaps in the floor. The floor too had a dual function: the gaps between the boards acted as a grating that allowed dust and small pieces of refuse to fall or be swept through them onto the ground beneath, where it

6660-412: The low bid for the construction contract submitted by the civil engineering contractor Fox, Henderson and Co , the commission accepted the scheme and gave its public endorsement to Paxton's design in July 1850. He was exultant but now had less than eight months to finalize his plans, manufacture the parts and erect the building in time for the exhibition's opening, which was scheduled for 1 May 1851. Paxton

6771-706: The name Dennisville. Both brothers died in 1939 and they are commemorated in the names of Dennisville's St John's Road and Raymond Crescent. During the Second World War the Ministry of Supply restricted Dennis to lorries and allocated bus production to Daimler and Guy . Over that period Dennis built some 3,000 6/8 ton capacity Max and 1,500 Pax 3-ton lorries, assembled 700 Churchill tanks , 17,000 engines for landing craft, 7,000 fire pumps, 750,000 bombs and 3,000 infantry carriers . Meanwhile, 'municipal vehicles' were built for military bases. The plant operated around

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6882-485: The new Duple-developed integrated body-chassis units. Duple owned Duple Metsec in Tipton , suppliers of bus body kits for assembly overseas. Hestair Duple 425 was displayed in October 1984 and in production a year later powered by Cummins engines. On 10 December 1985 Hestair Dennis Limited was renamed Dennis Specialist Vehicles Limited and again on 3 February 1986 to Hestair Specialist Vehicles Limited . In late 1985

6993-531: The new brand name for marketing the municipal vehicles built by Dennis Motors, Eagle Engineering and Yorkshire Vehicles. Non-specialist truck production for general haulage resumed in 1974 after a break of two years. New rear-engined single-decker and double-decker buses were announced in August 1977 after a bus-building break of eleven years. At the time of the announcement the workforce was 875 and Dennis Motors remained Guildford's largest employer. The first new bus

7104-449: The next three weeks, a price which still effectively limited entrance to middle-class and aristocratic visitors. The working classes finally came to the exhibition on 26 May, when weekday prices were reduced to one shilling (although the price was two shillings and sixpence on Fridays, and still five shillings on Saturdays). Over six million admissions were counted at the toll-gates, although the proportion which were repeat/returning visitors

7215-485: The objective of keeping maintaining it in its original condition. While it was at one time painted purple (one of the Royal College of Science colours) with RCS livery, it is now painted Wrexham Red with a London Fire Brigade livery. In 1979 it was fitted with a working, 1923 Dennis water pump. This replaced the original Gwynnes pump that was removed during World War Two. Jezebel attends many rallies and shows throughout

7326-444: The parts could be mass-produced in large numbers, and many parts served multiple functions, further reducing both the number of parts needed and their overall cost. Because of its comparatively low weight, the Crystal Palace required no heavy masonry for supporting walls or foundations. The relatively light concrete footings on which it stood could be left in the ground once the building was removed (they remain in place today just beneath

7437-423: The pioneering public gardens at Birkenhead Park which directly influenced the design of New York's Central Park . At Chatsworth, he had experimented extensively with glasshouse construction, developing many novel techniques for modular construction, using combinations of standard-sized sheets of glass, laminated wood , and prefabricated cast iron. The "Great Stove" (or conservatory) at Chatsworth (built in 1836)

7548-440: The positions for the cast iron columns; these points were then set precisely by theodolite measurements. Then the concrete foundations were poured, and the base plates for the columns were set into them. Once the foundations were in place, the erection of the modules proceeded rapidly. Connector brackets were attached to the top of each column before erection, and these were then hoisted into position. The project took place before

7659-461: The project, and with the enthusiastic backing of commission member Henry Cole , he decided to submit his own design. At this time, Paxton was chiefly known for his celebrated career as the head gardener for the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth House . By 1850, Paxton had become a preeminent figure in British horticulture and had also earned great renown as a freelance garden designer; his works included

7770-410: The relatively poor quality of the sealant materials available at that time meant that the problem was never totally overcome. To maintain a comfortable temperature inside such a large glass building was another major challenge, because the Great Exhibition took place decades before the introduction of electricity and air-conditioning. Glasshouses rely on the fact that they accumulate and retain heat from

7881-401: The roof of the original Hyde Park structure had a horizontal profile, so heavy rain posed a potentially serious safety hazard. Because normal cast glass is brittle and has low tensile strength, there was a risk that the weight of any excess water build-up on the roof might have caused panes to shatter, showering shards of glass onto the patrons, ruining the valuable exhibits beneath, and weakening

7992-443: The roofing. Once completed, the channels acted both as the joists that supported the roof sections, and as guttering—a patented design now widely known as a " Paxton gutter ". These gutters conducted the rainwater to the ends of each furrow, where they emptied into the larger main gutters, which were set at right angles to the smaller gutters, along the top of the main horizontal roof beams. These main gutters drained at either end into

8103-414: The sale of part of the original Dennis site. The Guildford workforce dropped from 700 to 400. Still one of Europe's largest builders of fire appliance chassis Dennis Specialist Vehicles was running at a loss. In the 1980s bus engines stayed beneath the floor but were moved as far back as possible to release luggage space. At the October 1986 Commercial Motor Show Dennis introduced its Javelin design using

8214-569: The satirical magazine Punch about the forthcoming Great Exhibition, referring to a "palace of very crystal". After the exhibition, the Palace was relocated to an open area of South London known as Penge Place which had been excised from Penge Common . It was rebuilt at the top of Penge Peak next to Sydenham Hill , an affluent suburb of large villas. It stood there from June 1854 until its destruction by fire in November 1936. The nearby residential area

8325-471: The short time remaining before the exhibition opening, which had already been scheduled for 1 May 1851. Within three weeks, the committee had received some 245 entries, including 38 international submissions from Australia, the Netherlands, Belgium, Hanover , Switzerland, Brunswick , Hamburg and France . Two designs, both in iron and glass, were singled out for praise—one by Richard Turner , co-designer of

8436-415: The structure. Paxton's ridge-and-furrow roof was designed to shed water very effectively. Rain ran off the angled glass roof panes into U-shaped timber channels which ran the length of each roof section at the bottom of the 'furrow'. These channels were ingeniously multifunctional. During construction, they served as the rails that supported and guided the trolleys on which the glaziers sat as they installed

8547-439: The sun, but such heat buildup would have been a major problem for the exhibition. This would have been exacerbated by the heat produced by the thousands of people who would be in the building at any given time. Paxton solved this with two clever strategies. One was to install external canvas shade-cloths that were stretched across the roof ridges. These served multiple functions: they reduced heat transmission, moderated and softened

8658-463: The surface of the site). The modules could be erected as quickly as the parts could reach the site—some sections were standing within eighteen hours of leaving the factory—and since each unit was self-supporting, workers were able to assemble much of the building section-by-section, without having to wait for other parts to be finished. Fox, Henderson and Co took possession of the site in July 1850, and erected wooden hoardings which were constructed using

8769-481: The surrounding grounds, and two large transepts were added at either end of the main gallery. It was modified and enlarged so much that it extended beyond the boundary of Penge Place, which was also the boundary between Surrey and Kent . The reconstruction was recorded for posterity by Philip Henry Delamotte , and his photographs were widely disseminated in his published works. The Crystal Palace Company also commissioned Negretti and Zambra to produce stereographs of

8880-406: The timber that later became the floorboards of the finished building. More than 5,000 navvies worked on the building during its construction, with up to 2,000 on site at one time during the peak building phase. More than 1,000 iron columns supported 2,224 trellis girders and 30 miles of guttering, comprising 4,000 tons of iron in all. Firstly stakes were driven into the ground to roughly mark out

8991-429: The whole business in 1915. New buildings were added to contain the manufacture of munitions. Following 1918's armistice there was a glut of war surplus vehicles and a consequent collapse in demand for new trucks. To try to compensate the Dennis product range was expanded into municipal vehicles — dustcarts (refuse collection), street cleaning vehicles, sewage tankers and pumps etc. Municipal vehicles do not suffer from

9102-467: The world gathered in its 990,000-square-foot (92,000 m ) exhibition space to display examples of technology developed in the Industrial Revolution . Designed by Joseph Paxton , the Great Exhibition building was 1,851 feet (564 m) long, with an interior height of 128 feet (39 m), and was three times the size of St Paul's Cathedral . The 293,000 panes of glass were manufactured by

9213-577: The year of re-opening, 18 handbooks were published in the Crystal Palace Library by Bradbury and Evans as guides to the new installations. Many of these were written by the specialists involved in creating and curating the new displays. So the 1854 guide to the Egyptian Court, destroyed in the 1866 fire, was entitled: 'The Egyptian Court in the Crystal Palace. Described by Owen Jones, architect, and Joseph Bonomi , sculptor'. That which included

9324-640: The year, as well as pub crawls and charity events. These regularly include trips to Brighton and the Isle of Wight. The Motor Club philosophy is that the Jezebel is there to be run (it travels everywhere under its own power, never on a transporter) and the engine's raison d'etre is to amuse and engage both students and the general public. Jezebel has appeared on TV, including the BBC's Blue Peter children's programme in 1982 and an episode of Downton Abbey . It also appeared in

9435-486: Was spring drive , a torsional shock absorber mounted at the input end of the drive line. Commercial vehicle activity increased. Their first was a van for Harrods in London . Dennis made its first bus in 1903 and their first fire engine in 1908 — for Bradford Council Fire Department. The last car was made in 1913 after the Dennis brothers saw there was less competition in the commercial vehicle market. The rate of growth of

9546-460: Was 135 feet (41 m) high, with 772,784 square feet (71,794.0 m ) on the ground floor alone. The Great Exhibition was opened on 1 May 1851 by Queen Victoria. It was the first of the World's fair exhibitions of culture and industry. There were some 100,000 objects, displayed along more than ten miles, by over 15,000 contributors. Britain occupied half the display space inside with exhibits from

9657-452: Was 4 feet (1.2 m) long. By mirroring this triangle he obtained the 8-foot-wide (2.4 m) gables that formed the vertical faces at either end of the prism, each of which was 24 feet (7.3 m) long. With this arrangement, Paxton could glaze the entire roof surface with identical panes that did not need to be trimmed. Paxton placed three of these 8 feet (2.4 m) by 24 feet (7.3 m) roof units side-by-side, horizontally supported by

9768-462: Was a manufacturer of motor-vans, motor-lorries, motor-fire-engines, motor-cars etc. The brothers' offer of shares to the public was substantially over-subscribed and Dennis Brothers Limited became a publicly listed company. Rising international tensions precipitated a major contract for supply of 1,000 3-ton "subsidy" lorries to private buyers on terms set by the War Office . Taking the subsidy obliged

9879-460: Was able to design and build the largest glass structure yet created, from scratch, in less than a year, and complete it on schedule and on budget. He was even able to alter the design shortly before building began, adding a high, barrel-vaulted transept across the centre of the building, at 90 degrees to the main gallery, under which he was able to safely enclose several large elm trees that would otherwise have had to be felled—thereby also resolving

9990-478: Was collected daily by a team of cleaning boys. Paxton also designed machines to sweep the floors at the end of each day. But in practice, it was found that the trailing skirts of the female visitors did the job well. Thanks to the considerable economies of scale Paxton was able to exploit, the manufacture and assembly of the building parts was exceedingly quick and cheap. Each module was identical, fully prefabricated, self-supporting, and fast and easy to erect. All of

10101-488: Was complementary to the existing range. On 31 December 1977 Dennis Motors Limited was renamed Hestair Dennis Limited . The former Dennis Motors business was renamed Hestair Dennis by August 1977. A Queen's Award for Export was received in 1978. In February 1980 John Smith, the managing director of Hestair Dennis, was jailed for life in Baghdad for paying "huge amounts for commercial deals and secret information". Four of

10212-579: Was followed by the Lance which used independent front suspension to allow a low floor halfway down the vehicle. The Crystal Palace#Exhibitions and events The Crystal Palace was a cast iron and plate glass structure, originally built in Hyde Park , London, to house the Great Exhibition of 1851. The exhibition took place from 1 May to 15 October 1851, and more than 14,000 exhibitors from around

10323-413: Was found for an expansion and modernisation programme and twelve months later the new chairman reported activities had been split into six clear-cut divisions and claimed they were "poised for recovery". The shareholders were faced with continuing losses. Responding to their invitation John King of Pollard Ball took up the challenge and accepted the position of chairman of the board. Julian Amery ,

10434-475: Was invited to take the lily to Chatsworth. It thrived under his care, and in 1849 he caused a sensation in the horticultural world when he succeeded in producing the first amazonica flowers to be grown in England. His daughter Alice was drawn for the newspapers, standing on one of the leaves. The lily and its house led directly to Paxton's design for the Crystal Palace. He later cited the huge ribbed floating leaves as

10545-430: Was known as the Crystal Palace pneumatic railway . Dozens of experts such as Matthew Digby Wyatt and Owen Jones were hired to create a series of courts that provided a narrative of the history of fine art. Amongst these were Augustus Pugin 's Mediaeval Court from the Great Exhibition, as well as courts illustrating Egyptian , Alhambra , Roman , Renaissance , Pompeian , and Grecian art and many others. During

10656-471: Was left open. Paxton also used longer trellis girders to create a clear span for the roof of the immense central gallery, which was 72 feet (22 m) wide and 1,800 feet (550 m) long. Paxton's roofing system incorporated his elegant solution to the problem of draining the building's vast roof area. Like the Chatsworth Lily House (but different to its later incarnation at Sydenham Hill), most of

10767-419: Was limited to six months, after which something had to be decided on the future of the Crystal Palace building. Against the wishes of parliamentary opponents, a consortium of eight businessmen, including Samuel Laing and Leo Schuster , who were both board members of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (LB&SCR), formed a holding company and proposed that the edifice be taken down and relocated to

10878-485: Was not until April 1919 that it was made public Dennis Brothers and White and Poppe had agreed to an exchange of shares in each other's business. The swap gave Dennis Brothers the controlling interest in White and Poppe. Alfred White and Peter Poppe joined the Dennis Brothers board but it was not until March 1933 in the midst of the 1930s depression that engine production was transferred from Coventry to Guildford. One chassis

10989-458: Was originally erected in Hyde Park in London to house the Great Exhibition of 1851, which showcased the products of many countries throughout the world. The commission in charge of mounting the Great Exhibition was established in January 1850, and it was decided at the outset that the entire project would be funded by public subscription. An executive building committee was quickly formed to oversee

11100-414: Was powered by a White and Poppe engine. This power unit was soon fitted to all their vehicles. Until well into the early years of the twentieth century the back wheels of most vehicles were driven by a chain from each side of a differential fixed to the chassis frame. Dennis Brothers developed and patented a reliable worm drive into a differential mounted on the back axle. Another feature of that period

11211-405: Was redesigned and covered with a barrel-vaulted roof; the central transept was greatly enlarged and made even higher; the large arch of the main entrance was framed by a new facade and served by an imposing set of terraces and stairways. The building measured 1,608 feet (490 m) feet in length by 384 feet (117 m) feet across the transepts. The new building was elevated several metres above

11322-832: Was renamed Crystal Palace after the landmark. This included the Crystal Palace Park that surrounds the site, home of the Crystal Palace National Sports Centre , which was previously a football stadium that hosted the FA Cup Final between 1895 and 1914. Crystal Palace F.C. were founded at the site and played at the Cup Final venue in their early years. The park still contains Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins 's Crystal Palace Dinosaurs which date back to 1854. The huge, modular, iron, wood and glass, structure

11433-407: Was renamed Dennis Motors Limited and with Eagle and Yorkshire Vehicles, managed as the Vehicle Division of Hestair Engineering. In June 1972 the manufacture of trucks for haulage ceased. In September Hestair sold Dennis' Mercury towing tractors and motor mowers to Marshalls (Halifax) and new plant was bought for the Guildford factory. Envec, an acronym for Environmental Vehicles, was chosen as

11544-604: Was sold to a Joseph Crosfield , a subsidiary of Unilever that manufactured chemicals and soap and was based in Warrington , Cheshire. The company's in-house, private fire brigade operated the engine until 1955, when it was donated it to the Royal College of Science Union for use as official transport of the Union President. Since then, the engine has been maintained by current and past students of Imperial College London. With

11655-465: Was the Dominator with a double-deck body followed by more new buses named Jubilant , Dorchester , Lancet and Falcon . The Falcon chassis took either single or double-deck bodies. All these names belonged to previous successful Dennis models. A new range of fire appliances, the R series, went into production in 1976. A single specialist fire engine chassis on which modular body units could be mounted it

11766-411: Was the first major application of his ridge-and-furrow roof design and was at the time the largest glass building in the world, covering around 28,000 square feet (2,600 m ). A decade later, taking advantage of the availability of the new cast plate glass , Paxton further developed his techniques with the Chatsworth Lily House, which featured a flat-roof version of the ridge-and-furrow glazing, and

11877-573: Was the ironwork contractor Fox and Henderson, whose director Charles Fox was also knighted for his contribution. The 900,000 square feet (84,000 m ) of glass was provided by the Chance Brothers glassworks in Smethwick. This was the only glassworks capable of fulfilling such a large order; it had to bring in labour from France to fulfil the order in time. The final dimensions were 1,848 feet (563 m) long by 456 feet (139 m) wide. The building

11988-489: Was the manufacture of chassis for fire appliances and public service vehicles. Almost all the 35-acre Woodbridge Hill site was sold. At the October 1988 Motor Show Dennis and Duple displayed their new Dennis Dart midibus. At the end of 1988 the Vehicle Division of Hestair Engineering comprised: Trinity Holdings, the management of the Vehicle Division of Hestair Engineering with the backing of banking institutions, bought Dennis from Hestair. Geoff Hollyhead, former head of

12099-526: Was two stories high, with the upper floor stepped in from the boundary. Most of the building had a flat-profile roof, except for the central transept, which was covered by a 72-foot-wide (22 m) barrel-vaulted roof that stood 168 feet (51 m) high at the top of the arch. Both the flat-profile sections and the arched transept roof were constructed using the key element of Paxton's design: his patented ridge-and-furrow roofing system, which had first seen use at Chatsworth. The basic roofing unit, in essence, took

12210-530: Was unable to supply. During 1957 sales in both home and export markets fell. Demand for commercial vehicles did not recover after the Suez Crisis . The new Loline buses were in service and a variant new chassis was now available with front entry providing driver control of the door. In the 1960s engines moved to the back of the buses. In May 1962, Dennis bought the fire appliance division of Hawker Siddeley Group's Alfred Miles. In April 1964 Dennis purchased

12321-555: Was used for both lorries and buses. In the 1920s Dennis began to design and build separate chassis for their public service vehicles (buses) with a lower ride height. Pneumatic tyres were introduced. Forward control buses were added to their catalogue in the same decade. Export markets were developed between the wars, particularly vehicles for Hong Kong. The decade began with the Great Depression . Diesel engines were in demand for larger commercial vehicles. New Dennis buses were

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