The Festival of Britain

Having enjoyed a couple of (virtual) walks along the South Bank recently, and with its 70^th anniversary coming up this year, I thought it might be a good time to write about the Festival of Britain which took place along this stretch of the Thames riverside in the summer of 1951. Only the Royal Festival Hall remains as a reminder of this hugely successful initiative, conceived (and generally welcomed) as an antidote to the drabness of post-war London.

 

After the Second World War much of London lay in ruins and morale, unsurprisingly, was low. Despite the Allied victory, the war had been costly, decent housing was hard to come by and stringent rationing was still very much in force.

The Festival of Britain was an attempt to raise the spirits of Londoners and at the same time promote top-quality design in the rebuilding of a new, modern capital city. In both those aims the Festival was a success.  Historian Kenneth Morgan described how people: “flocked to the South Bank site, to wander around […] and generally enjoy a festival of national celebration. A people curbed by years of total war and half-crushed by austerity and gloom, showed that it had not lost the capacity for enjoying itself. Above all, the Festival made a spectacular setting as a showpiece for the inventiveness and genius of British scientists and technologists.”

Official FOB programme

From the outset (as with most big projects!) the Festival quickly became a party political issue. Although Herbert Morrison, the Labour minister behind the whole idea, declared it not to be his intention, the Festival quickly became associated with the Labour Party (who had won the 1950 election) and was opposed by the Conservative Party who saw it as some kind of suspect Socialist propaganda mission!

Festival site plan

Although the Festival did feature events at other locations in the city, the main exhibitions and attractions were on the South Bank which, in contrast to the bustling hub we know today, was at that time an area blighted by derelict warehouses and dilapidated housing, much of it bomb-damaged. The site, covering 27 acres, was cleared to make way for a series of structures in the International Modernist style, little seen in Britain before the war, and at the same time open up views of the river.

 

The Skylon

 Chief among the visitor attractions, and ever after   the symbol for this iconic event in London’s history,  was undoubtedly the vertical feature known as the   Skylon - a cigar-shaped aluminium-clad steel tower   supported by cables. The base was nearly 50 feet   from the ground, with the top nearly 300 feet up.   The frame was clad in aluminium louvres lit from   within at night.

 

 Equally futuristic was the Dome of Discovery, at the   time its giant self-supporting dome was the largest   such structure in the world, standing 93 feet tall with   a diameter of 365 feet. The Dome featured   exhibitions on such themes as: discovery of the New   World, the Polar regions, the Sea, the Sky and Outer   Space. The emphasis here, as indeed throughout the

The Dome of Discovery

Festival, was on British rather than world achievements. As well as exploration, the Dome also focused on industrial advances with a display of over 10,000 items – well-designed, mass-produced and affordable. New styles in interior design also featured prominently with new furniture and colourful textiles attracting much interest among people more used to drab, monochrome surroundings.

Sadly, the cost of entry to the Dome, at five shillings, was a bit steep for most ordinary people and this aroused much criticism at the time. Fifty years later this futuristic structure was to provide the inspiration for New Labour's Millennium Dome in Greenwich. 

Film was an important medium for the Festival and was used to great effect to explain scientific and technological concepts to the general public. There was a purpose-built film theatre on the South Bank,  (the 400-seat "Telekinema"), which showed documentary and experimental film using stereo technology. It was one of the most popular attractions, drawing in 458,693 visitors. When the Festival ended, the facility was handed over to the BFI for use as a members-only cinema club, re-opening in 1952 as the NFT, and still going strong in 2021 as the BFI Southbank repertory cinema.

 

The Royal Festival Hall

 The centrepiece of the Festival was undoubtedly the   Royal Festival Hall, a state-of-the-art 2,900-seater   venue which officially opened on 3 May 1951.   Modernist in style, it was one of the first concert   halls in the world to be built using the application of   scientific principles: the acoustic behaviour of the   seats was measured and tested in a laboratory and   careful consideration was given to the elimination of   external noise from nearby Waterloo station. Design   features included a sweeping staircase, airy and     spacious foyers, and a suspended auditorium.

The exterior of the building was bright white, intended to contrast with the blackened city surrounding it. Large areas of glass on its façade let light flood into the interior and, at night, the glass let the light from inside flood out onto the river. The journalist Bernhard Levin gave the following impression of his first visit: “I was overwhelmed by a shock of breathless delight at the originality and beauty of the interior. It felt as if I had been instantly transported far into the future and that I was on another planet.”

 

The Festival Pleasure Gardens, Battersea

Although the South Bank dominated the Festival’s programme, there were events elsewhere in London, notably the Festival Pleasure Gardens in Battersea, modelled on the Pleasure Gardens of the 18^th century. This was an amusement park unlike any other and survived well into the 1970s as Battersea Fun Fair. As well as rides, it boasted a miniature railway, a restaurant with a terrace overlooking the river, foaming fountains, a wine garden surrounded by miniature pavilions, a wet weather pavilion (with a stage facing two ways so that performances could take place in the open air) and an amphitheatre seating 1,250 people.  

 

The Lansbury Estate

 Another Festival attraction away from the riverside was the       architecture ‘exhibit’, the model Lansbury Estate in Poplar.   Poplar, so close to the East End docks, had suffered severe   damage in the war and so was an obvious candidate for the   provision of new and affordable social housing. The first houses   on the Lansbury were completed and occupied by February 1951   and people came from all over London to visit the Estate. They   were greeted by pavilions demonstrating new ideas and   construction techniques and given the opportunity to look round   show homes. Priority for the new homes was given to Poplar   residents. The estate offered spacious flats and maisonettes with   inside bathrooms and gardens allowing residents to hang their   washing outside. The homes were a far cry from the     overcrowded slums that many would have come from.

 

 

So was the Festival of Britain a successful venture? It certainly wasn’t cheap to put on – around £10.5 million – but there was plenty of money taken at the turnstiles with an incredible 8.5 million people visiting during the five months it was open.  Always planned as a temporary exhibition, the Festival finally closed its doors in September 1951. In the month that followed the closure, a new Conservative government got straight to work demolishing the South Bank site and removing almost all trace of the Festival of Britain – some say with unseemly haste. The only feature to remain was the Royal Festival Hall, designated a Grade 1 listed building in 1988, the first post-war building to be thus protected. And yet the Festival leaves a cultural legacy in the regeneration of the  South Bank area from an industrial wasteland to a destination of choice for locals and tourists alike. And it marked the beginning of a more affluent period in Britain’s history.

 There has been occasional discussion of the possibility of holding a 21^st-century Festival of Britain. Indeed, in 2018 Theresa May announced that the government was planning a ‘Festival of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’, to be held in 2022. However, the proposed event, intended to unite the United Kingdom after Brexit, was widely criticised as the date coincided with the centenary of the Irish Civil War and risked inflaming tensions. Given the torrid events of 2020 it now seems even more unlikely that any project of this kind will get off the ground any time soon.

 

References:

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Vmzq1s7xgE&ab_channel=MagneticVision

Website: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festival_of_Britain

Website: https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/The-Festival-of-Britain-1951/

Pleasures of London F.Barker and P. Jackson (2008)

London: the Illustrated History C. Ross and J. Clark (2008)

Website: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Festival_Hall#The_original_building