Joseph Paxton

Sir Joseph Paxton (1803–1865) was an English gardener and architect of The Crystal Palace.

He was born on 3 August 1803 at Milton Bryant , Bedfordshire. (Some references, incorrectly, list his birth date as 3 August 1801 This is as a result of misinformation he provided in his teens which he admitted in later life.)

He became a garden boy, and in 1823 obtained a position at the Horticultural Society's Chiswick Gardens. These lay adjacent to the gardens of William Spencer, 6th Duke of Devonshire at Chiswick House. After a chance meeting, and on impulse, the Duke offered the 23 year-old Joseph Paxton the position of Head Gardener at Chatsworth.

On his first morning at Chatsworth, Paxton met Sarah Bown, the housekeeper's niece, and they got married. He also enjoyed a very friendly relationship with the "Bachelor Duke".

In 1837, Paxton started the Great Conservatory, a huge cast iron heated glasshouse. At the time, the Conservatory was the largest glass building in the world. However, it was prohibitively expensive to heat, and it was destroyed in 1923. It took five attempts to blow it up.

The Great Conservatory was the test-bed for the prefabricated glass and iron structural techniques which Paxton would employ for his masterpiece – The Crystal Palace of the Great Exhibition of 1851.

In 1850 Paxton was commissioned by Baron Mayer de Rothschild to design Mentmore Towers in Buckinghamshire. This was to be one of the greatest country houses built during the Victorian Era. Following the completion of Mentmore, one of Baron de Rothschild's cousins commissioned Château de Ferrières at Ferrières-en-Brie near Paris to be 'Another Mentmore, but twice the size'. Both buildings still stand today.

Paxton also designed another country house, a smaller version of Mentmore at Battlesden near Woburn in Bedfordshire. This house was bought by the Duke of Bedford thirty years after its completion, and wantonly demolished, because the Duke wanted no other mansion close to Woburn Abbey.

He also worked on several other large projects at Chatsworth, such as the Arboretum, the Great Fountain, the Rock Garden and the Lily House.

Between 1835 and 1839, he organised plant-hunting expeditions, one of which ended in tragedy. Tragedy also struck at home when his eldest son died.

Paxton was honoured by being a member of the Kew Commission which was to suggest improvements for Royal Botanic Gardens, and by being considered for the post of Head Gardener at Windsor Castle.

He became affluent, not so much through his Chatsworth job, but by successful speculation in the railway industry.

In 1831, Paxton published a monthly magazine, The Horticultural Register. This was followed in 1834 by the Magazine of Botany. There followed in 1840 the Pocket Botanical Dictionary, The Flower Garden in 1850 and the Calendar of Gardening Operations.

He died on 8 June 1865

External Links

• BBC Historic Figures
• The Joseph Paxton Society
• Eddie Richardson's page on Sir Joseph Paxton - includes photgraphs and a family tree