The Anthaeum: Brighton’s Great Glass Lie
- gnosticmystic67
- Oct 7, 2025
- 16 min read
Brighton’s skyline has always been a theatre of the unreal. Domes, cupolas, crescents, palaces — some still standing, others erased, others called “unbuilt.” And then there is the Anthaeum: a botanical paradise under Europe’s largest free standing glass dome, it “collapsed” in August 1833, a day before opening.
That’s the story, at least. But look closer, and its scholarly historical validity crumbles into comedic, far-fetched multi-layered wonderland.
The Official Version
The Anthaeum was dreamed up by botanist Henry Phillips, designed by architect Amon Henry Wilds, and financed by Sir Isaac Goldsmid, one of the richest men in Great Britain. It would house tropical plants, shaded walks, a lake — an Eden under a glass dome 164 feet wide and 65 feet high, exceeding the that of St. Paul's in Rome.
The Grand Vision
In the early 1830s, Brighton was suffering an economic downturn. The frivolty and debauchery of George IV period a rumoured memory during the dog days until the Victorian era began in 1837, William and Adelaide's dullness, matching the mood, ensured the Pavilion was no longer the seaside playhouse of the elite.
But it seemed every architect and financier in town was sketching domes, crescents, crescendos of iron and glass. Including many without any architectural training. Such as Phillips. A botanist and landscape gardener, imagined a cathedral of plants – tropical palms, lakes, shaded walks under a dome 165 feet wide and 65 feet high. Wilds drew the designs. Let's imagine these Sussex born associates at the Old Ship Hotel, large brandies already quaffed:
Phillips: "I've got an extraordinary design idea to challenge your rich, vast architectural pallette A.W."
A.W. Wilds: "But nothing is beyond my exceptional gifts. Pray tell, your already failing gambit.
Phillips: "The world's largest free standing glass dome, to house a plethora of botanical wonders at a constant temperate climate."
A.W. Wilds: .....is that all....?......let me lay out this napkin and i'll have one knocked out for you quicker than i can knock back this brandy.....i'm feeling Pre-Post Oriental Revivalist...........Didnt we try something similar with Oriental Gardens in 27?...couldn't get the 'investment' to get it off the ground. Who are you thinking of getting on board with the financing.....and where shall we build this new wonder?"
Phillips: "Issaac........ Conjures money by will out thee aether....and the nation's pockets. Marvellous connections (and 'compromising' leverage) to get some Act of Parliament to set up a shell company. Plus he owns a field opposite the front in Hove, next to his Brunswick Town ego project, and boarder fleecer. Perfect setting, looking out to sea.......How long do you think it will take to construct.....and how much?"
A.W. Wilds: "......If the weather holds...... no unforeen bugger of of a storm playing merry havoc..........under a year.....Trust me. I'm so confident i'll set a grand opening date for August 31st next year....As for the cost?........Whatever we make up............What she we call her?"
Phillips: "The Anthaeum."
A.W.Wilds: "???..........But wasn't that what the last one was called?"
Phillips: "No, that was The Athenaeum......More brandy A.W.?"
A.W. Wilds: "I'm shitfaced as it is Henry!.......Meant to get out on the boat tomorrow and start drawing the panorama of the seafront, to dedicate to the Queen; those undulating waves a curse to my immense drawing abilities .....and with a monstrous hangover..........She can fucking wait, dammit!......Pour me one as large as the glory of Empire!
It was to crown Hove’s west cliff, where Adelaide Crescent/Palmeira Square are now, looking down toward the sea; a rival to anything in Kew or Regent’s Park, or most places in the world. A temple of botany, of progress, of money.
What Was Inside (and Why It Matters)
Forget the idea of a half-finished folly. Contemporary descriptions of the Anthaeum read like a 19th century Eden Project.
A full indoor landscape: tropical trees and shrubs, hundreds of flower varieties, artificial lakes, mounds, even birds and fish introduced to live under glass.
Promenades and arbours: walks lined with seats, enough for 800 people, designed for public leisure.
Heating: the entire dome kept at ~32°C using coke-fired stoves from Brighton’s gasworks, with heat vented in through stoke-holes. This wasn’t a cold shell – it was climate control before the term existed.
Scale: a 165-ft diameter dome, 65-70ft high, enclosing 1.5 acres. Around 40,000 sq ft of glass. Cupola terrace at the top for views over sea and downs.
Logistics: cast-iron ribs, weighing between 440 and 500 tons in total and 5ft wide at their base, shipped to Shoreham harbour, dragged by horses into Hove. A 12-ft deep circular brick foundation dug and set, to which the emormous ribs were bolted to iron plates. Built in under a year; started autumn 1832 and finished 30th Aug. 1833 — supposedly.
Subscriptions: public entry was planned — 1 shilling ticket, or 1–2 guinea passes for weekly/daily access. A theatre of spectacle, not a private dream.
Eyewitnesses: one bishop recalled “many thousands of plants already in place… walls and mounds covered.” That doesn’t sound like a ruin-in-waiting. That sounds like a finished interior.
The Precursor - Oriental Gardens:
Phillips and Wilds had worked together on another Oriental large domed conservatory as part of their ambtious seafront square project started in 1825. The very similarly named Athenaeum was to have occupied the north. Guess what it was to house: trees palms and hothouse plants, with other sections, as part of a wider complex, to have included a museum, a literary institute and a school for scientific education. Oriental Place and Oriental Terrace were completed, but funds disappeared in 1827 to finish the rest. We can see Wilds drawing c.1825 of his intended vision below:
Yet below we have a clearly different artist also including Athenaeum, despite it not being there. While rendered in contrasting style, it is almost identical to Wilds in accurately depicting its details, and Oriental Place. Perhaps, they knew each other. Or, the unamed artist simultaneously plucked from the information field a drawing of the same vision, that wasn't there, as Wilds. Twice arouses suspicion.
But, Wilds did manage to have enough money to complete a house for himself, the beautiful, extravagant Oriental style Western Pavillion, at Western Terrace, Brighton. This is north of Oriental Place, and almost connects the two, even today. And its very similar in style to the proposed Athenaeum:
The Sudden Rise & Its Bound To Fall
The official story is so farcical, a sequence of events and decisions so implausible, that it seems as if it's a pivate elite in-joke of 200 years, smirking its knowing superiority through a skewered historical perspective - who wrote those old history books?
It was commenced in July 1832 from a design by Mr. Henry Phillips, the well known botanist of the town, after having been submitted to some of the first engineers and architects of the day:
"On the 29th July, 1832, Mr. Henry Wilds, as architect, laid out the ground, and the brick foundations into which the iron principals were built, were proceeded with. The scaffolding was erected in circles five in number, each ring exceeding the other in height. Principals after principals were bolted into position under the inspection of Mr. Peter Hollis, the engineer; but a misunderstanding arising between the architect and the engineer, the former was dismissed"
Royal Institute of British Architects, , Fall of the Iron Dome of the Anthaeum at Brighton, , Transactions, , 1872
So, according to this report Wilds was seemingly hands on at the construction site right at the beginning, and the design had been perused by engineers and architects? But, A.W. apparently left the project shocked with the contractor Mr Henry English's ( of the Griffin Foundry, Clerkenwall) decision to dispense with the central pillar, contending the cupola platform would bear the weight instead.
(Just a thought.......how were visitors able to ascend to the cupola viewing platform without a central pillar to support a stairway?......maybe by elaborate rope and pulley kite technology).
Phillips, exasperated at the lack of pillar, and the sight of opposing ribs unaligned under the wooden scaffolding, and having sought the advice of noted civil engineer John Rennie (who declined to visit) as to the structural integrity and removal of scaffolding, somewhat baffingly continued to attend to landscaping and botanical matters at the scene, while being taunted by his unsteady domed wonder:
"The writer of the article in the Brighton Guardian newspaper (of Sept 4th, 1833, from which these notes are obtained) had remarked the heavy appearance of the top and a peculiar twist of some of the ribs which had acquired a considerable bend. Mr. Phillips was occupied during Friday under the very centre of the dome, marking out the formation of an aquarium. A little before seven o'clock, a gardener was alarmed by a loud cracking noise, when in a few seconds the whole top part of the dome fell in, and during the night many of the principals which had remained standing came down with a crash"
Royal Institute of British Architects, , Fall of the Iron Dome of the Anthaeum at Brighton, , Transactions, , 1872
Mr Peter Hollis, the engineer, most Brighton histories contend, resigned three months before the end, after a row with Mr English about his suggestion that diagonal brackets might help steady the ribbed skeleton, leaving the contractor without the supervision of architect or engineer. Yet this conlficts with the account from Royal British Institutue of Architects record of the Antheum from 1872:
"Principals after principals were bolted into position under the inspection of Mr. Peter Hollis, the engineer; but a misunderstanding arising between the architect and the engineer, the former was dismissed"
English, now free from the shackles of experts, had the scaffolding removed apparently too early, before an integrity, or common sense, assessment, intent on proving his design credentails - but surely it would have had to be taken down anyway? Hours later, on 30 August 1833, the day before its public opening, the dome “suddenly collapsed” down in a heap of twisted iron and shattered glass - much like his theory it didn't need a central pillar to hold its vast weight.
Nobody died, by miracle, we're told. The project was abandoned. Ruins lay on Hove’s Adelaide Crescent/Palmeira Square for seventeen years, when the site was cleared for the terraces you see today:
The Times, Sept. 1833, reported as follows: ’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 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. The ruins were visited yesterday by several hundred persons. It was situated at the western extremity of the town, and would have formed one of the most splendid ornaments in the world.’
A dome of this scale and expense – financed by Goldsmid’s circle – just falls down like a badly-built shed because the contractor insisted on excluding a fundamental part of the design: the central pillar? While men of the calibre, expertise and social standing of Wilds and Phillips just gave up, without asserting their seniority and rank? We are expected to accept that?
Perhaps to conversation regarding the pillar, between Wilds and Mr English should have gone like this:
A.W.Wilds: "Ah.....English. You seem to think it pertinent to exclude the central pillar from my glass dome........It's a bloody fundamental part of the design......its absence will be synonomous with total collapse without it!"
Mr English: "I deem it to be an uneeded extravagance. The cupola platform will suffice to hold structural integrity."
A.W.Wilds: "Right.....you utter ruddy shit! Your impertinent uneducated arrogance a shame to your whore of a mother...I'm Amon Fucking Henry Wilds.......i have built half of Brighton........there is nothing i don't know about architectural design. So.......if i dont see the start of the central pillar being constructed tomorrow you will be unceremoniously dispensed to the Town Hall basement prison, beaten for fun, deprived of all your wordly wares, before ending your days in Lewes Gaol, faggoted to syphilitic oblivion from pillar to post!!!........how apt.............Understood?"
The ruin was left as a crumpled romantic curiosity for years, until it was finally cleared in 1850.
The Financiers
The land on which the Anthaeum was built was part of the Wick Estate, owned by Goldsmid by 1830, who had wished build a new crescent adjacent to his Brunswick Terrace. It was designed by Decimus Burton, and displayed at the Royal Academy in 1831.
The Brighton Herald, 3 December 1831, announced that a new crescent ‘was now being laid out by Mr G. Cheesman in the brickfield adjacent to Brunswick Terrace.’ Now thats quick work - from design to construction. Ten houses we are told were completed between 1830 and 1834, with three comprising Adelaide Terrace, still there today. But, the Antheum was being constructed at the same time and location (now Palmeira Square) - a complex logistical juggling act - especially as work stopped after the disaster on the terrace for a very long period. Surely Goldsmid, a man of of such financial reknown and infamy, would be more scrupulous with his oversight and investments?
Goldsmid’s involvement is brushed over in most tellings. But this was no mere local sponsor. The Goldsmid and Mocatta families were bullion brokers to the Bank of England and had long ties with the East India Company. They were the money behind empire, not quaint Hove gardens. So why would they care about a botanical dome on a Brighton cliff, especially if it halted progress on their proprietal ambitions? Was it civic vanity, or something else? What was the incentive? It is not wild to suggest that for people with this kind of reach, buildings could rise and fall as easily as numbers on a ledger. If the Anthaeum stood, it stood at their pleasure. And if it fell, it may not have been “mismanagement” so much as decision
Amon Henry Wilds: The Fall Guy
Wilds walked away from the project before the end, disgusted by changes he knew would doom it. At least, that’s what the record says. But perhaps he was playing his role – the architect as witness, scapegoat, or reluctant conspirator. During 1833 he was supposedly drawing a panorama of Brighton seafont, 15ft long and in 6 sections, on a boat so steady it seemed unreal – maybe with only brandy to bolsten his hand, and temperament if itsuddenly got choppy. Was he simply an artist too in awe of his ego to not be able to leave a chronicle of his vision, or a chronicler of structures that briefly stood in another layer of Brighton’s history?
The Atheneum and the Brighton Panorama weren't the the only projects he was involved with from 1832-33, as we can see below. So, he was occupied with multiple design endeavours, while, for a time overseeing the Anthaeum. A busy man:
With the opportunity to achieve the breathtaking legacy of designing a masterpiece to rival the world's finest architecture, and attendent prestige and plaudits, he allows a mere contractor to override his design and walks away in a huff. It makes no sense - and hardly enhances his reputation.
The Aftermath
There was talk of of reviving and restoring the Anthaeum soon after its demise, with the brickwork and iron ribs assessed to be in fair enough condition (though not according to The Times who wrote the ribs 'shattered into 10,000 pieces' - remarkable for cast iron) Local architect Sir Charles Busby (Brunswick Town one of his) supported the idea, but will and funds, much like his own finances were gone: arrested for debt in 1827, declared bankrupt in 1833. A meeting at Brighton Town Hall, a few weeks later, assessed the cost to be between £2,000 - £10,000 , roughly equivalent to £1 million - it is estimated the original cost £2 million.
Adding another ridiculous layer to proceedings, local architect S.H. Benham claimed, a few days later, that his late father had originally built a half-inch scale model of the Atheneum in 1827, even offering the opportunity to inspect this hitherto unmentioned design ...........First thing i would have looked at is whether it had a central pillar.
We're told Phillips went blind from the shock of seeing his extraordinary dream shattered. But then he was subsequently giving lectures about botanical and horticultural in Brighton in 1834 - of course a man of his expertise would have no need for notes or illustrations. The Sussex Advertiser begged to differ as his fate:
“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.
It seems the damage suffered by Henry was also to his financial irregularities and subsequent liberty.
Mr English? We are told he made a swift exit from the country, and was never heard of again. Of course.
Perhaps most puzzlingly of all, if possible, the glazier Thomas Smith advertised the selling off of the eliptic glass afterwards, that had already been cut to size - i can't imagine there were many giant Dome dreaming takers at the time. His advertisement states: 'The building having been bought to such a forward state as to be ready for the glazers'. The Times had also noted tha the glazing wasn't due to commence until 3rd September - three days after the grand opening.
This strongly suggests the Anthaeum was just skeleton ribbed, without glass - hardly befitting a grand opening and hosting subscribing visitors - the day before its grand opening. But if the dome had never been finished, had it even been started........from scratch. Or is it possible that this incredible structure had existed as described - tropical trees, artificial lakes, aquarium, exotic flaura and fauna - but built before our story began; a victim to another, unexplained destruction with the 1833 'construction' instead being a restoration attempt; or even a great deceit - financially, and historically.
This was not a model (Unless you were S.E. Bentham's father). Not a fantasy. It was real, vast, and inhabited. Just not by those who claimed it as theirs.
1833: The Year of Ruins and Skyfire
Now place the Anthaeum’s fall in context:
August 1833: dome collapse.
October 1833: Brighton’s Chain Pier damaged by tempest, two months later.
November 1833: the great Leonid meteor storm, the most dramatic of the 19th century, reported worldwide. Fire across the sky. Structures fall, skies blaze. Brighton caught the cycle in miniature.
Official history separates these. But to the field-aware eye, they form a pattern: structures breaking, skies falling, the mid-point of a Phoenix cycle. Brighton is not immune. The ruins on its cliff were part of a wider story of collapse and erasure in that year. And remember the desolate sense of ruin of the brick kiln painting - were there events that tell another story?
The Pictures That Lie
All the depictions of the Anthaeum you see are the only that are available, or have survived. Look closely at the few engravings, watercolours and illustrations of the Anthaeum and Oriental Place's Athenaeum with its onion domes. Wasn't there an artist who thought of getting closer to their subject, especially given the extraordinary nature of the architecture and what it supposedly housed; yet we only see her in the the distance, as if adverse to greater scrutiny.
This was not some flimsy half-structure. In most pictures it looks lived-in, already weathered. What if the story of “never finished, collapsed before opening” is a cover for something more brutal – a structure erased, not failed?
Holes in the Story
Flaky Protagonists: It seems implausible that men with the esteem and reputation of Wilds, Phillips and Goldsmid, would allow a contractor - reponsible for logistics - to make any design decisions, or be left overall control of the project considering its unprecedented size and scale.
The Brighton Panorama Problem: Wilds’ 1833 panorama of Brighton includes the Anthaeum dome, plus the Oriental Gardens “never built.” Later versions of the panorama erased the Gardens. Why erase what supposedly never stood, yet keep that which barely stood? And where did he find the time to create this 15ft artwork, out out sea.
Built in a Year? Impossible: From empty brickfield to engineered dome with tropical interiors, in 12 months? With horses hauling cast iron ribs from Shoreham harbour. 10 ft deep, 165 brick foundations dug and built. Architect, designer and engineer walking away from the project. While Adelaide Crescent and houses were being simultaneously constructed. The timeline reads like theatre, not construction.
Incomplete Structure: The Times writing that the glazing wasn't due to start until 3 days after grand opening, Thomas Smith selling off all of the unused cut glass, and Phillips only marking out the aquarium only hours before collapse, all point to the Antheum to be incomplete.
Why a Grand Opening Date?: If this was an unprecedented, experimental construction, why announce a public launch and sell subscriptions? Why the complete confidence it would be ready — unless it was. Maybe it was just in need of
Goldsmid’s Money Doesn’t Rot: The ruins were left until the 1850s, we’re told. But financiers of Goldsmid’s calibre didn’t let investment ground sit idle for 17 years.
The Convenient Collapse: The day before opening, the dome comes down. Neat. Too neat. Perfect timing to obscure destruction, not accident.
Closing
So: was the Anthaeum a failed dream, or a destroyed reality? You can walk past Palmeira Square today and you’ll see only stucco terraces. Or you can stand still, listen, and feel the echo of a dome that once caught the sky, shattered in 1833 not by accident, but by design? It was too real, too telling — and it was destroyed. But how?
Brighton’s hidden history does not lie quietly. It waits for those ready to call the official story what it is: a cover-up, a convenient fiction. The Anthaeum was not a folly that failed. It was a glorious glass temple to real progress. And somebody made sure it fell.
Sources:
Royal Institute of British Architects, , Fall of the Iron Dome of the Anthaeum at Brighton, , Transactions, , 1872;
Judy Middleton (1979): A History of Hove
Antony Dale (1967) [1947]: Fashionable Brighton 1820–1860 (2nd ed.)
The Anthaeum, Hove: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthaeum,_Hove
John Bruce: The History of Brighton, with the latest improvements, to 1836
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