The Festival of Britain: A Tonic for the Nation
By Sally Sellers
The years after World War II in Britain were drab and austere and Attlee’s Labour Government decided to create something which would be a tonic for the nation and focus on a brighter future.
The Festival of Britain opened on May 3rd 1951,100 years after the Great Exhibition of 1851. Its aim was to celebrate all that was great about Britain with a focus on science, industry and design. While events would take place across the country the main focus would be on two sites in London.
A badly bombed industrial area on the Southbank, between Waterloo and Westminster Bridges, housed the educational and informative exhibitions whilst, three miles down the river, Battersea Park was to be home to the more frivolous part of the celebration.
One sole purpose FUN!
The festival was the vision of Gerald Barry, who declared “1951 should be a year of fun, fantasy and colour.” The Festival Gardens provided all three. Designed along the lines of Copenhagen’s famous Tivoli Gardens and with echoes of the 17th and 18th century English Pleasure Gardens such as Vauxhall, they featured a Riverside Theatre, Dance Pavilion, lawn and flower gardens, lakes and fountains, a children’s zoo, bars and restaurants as well of course as the huge attractions of the Funfair and the Far Tottering and Oyster Creek Branch Railway. Many visitors travelled by boat from the South Bank site and alighted at the park’s riverside pier. From here the ‘Grand Vista’ afforded views of the exciting entertainments ahead. As darkness fell the lighting on the lakes and fountains, chandeliers in the dance pavilion and nightly fireworks created an atmosphere of magical escapism.
Spectacular fairground attractions
Unsurprisingly during the war the development of fairground rides had been the last thing on the mind of British industry, but in America new rides had been developed with heights and speeds that hugely increased their attraction. Despite vociferous opposition the Festival Committee won £30,000 from the Treasury, took a group of British showmen to the USA and returned having purchased spectacular new rides for Battersea Park. The Sky Wheel, Moon Rocket, Big Dipper, Flying Cars, Boomerang and many more provided thrills and excitement and certainly helped to ensure that the crowds flocked there.
The Far Tottering and Oyster Creek Branch Railway
Although the other festival sites were essentially forward looking, the Battersea Festival Gardens evoked a sense of nostalgia and those important national characteristics of whimsy and silliness which had raised spirits throughout the war. This was especially true of what was for many the favourite attraction of them all. Rowland Emett was known for his playful cartoons in 1930’s Punch magazine, including detailed drawings of decrepit old engines, and the Festival’s chief designer James Gardner put forward the idea that these be turned into 3D reality. This was to become the Far Tottering and Oyster Creek Railway on which, for a shilling, passengers could travel the 500 yds from one side of the gardens to the other. Three quaint engines, Nellie, Neptune and Wild Goose pulled 5 or 6 coaches between the grandiose Far Tottering station, with its clock tower cupola and cuckoo, and Oyster Creek, a seaside fisherman’s hut covered in nautical paraphernalia and topped with a weather predicting machine in the style of a pop bottle. The railway proved so popular that it covered its costs in the first three weeks.
A lasting success
In a parliamentary debate on 26th November 1951, to consider the future of the gardens, it was reported that over 8 million people had visited of which more than 70% were Londoners. It was also stated that they “conducted themselves in the most orderly and good-humoured way, and gave no trouble to anybody.” After much discussion it was agreed that the Gardens should remain open beyond the end of the Festival itself. In fact a funfair remained open in the park until 1974. Today there is still much to be seen in the park relating to the Festival, for example the main features of the Grand Vista and Fountains Lake.
The story as prepared for the Nine Elms interpretive board is here .
