The Queen's Tower - Workspace

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The Queen's Tower has since been a feature of Imperial College and can be .... the Prince of Wales from Mrs Elizabeth M.
Imperial College Queen’s Tower Information Booklet

Picture by Neville Miles

The Queen’s Tower The Queen’s Tower is all that remains of the Imperial Institute, which was built to mark Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887.

(The Imperial Institute

became the Commonwealth Institute.)

The Imperial Institute building was designed by T. E. Collcutt in the neorenaissance style. It was 700 feet long with a central tower (the Queen’s Tower) and smaller towers at the east and west ends. It contained a library, laboratories, conference rooms and exhibition galleries with gardens at the rear. Construction work took six years and the Institute was opened in 1893.

From the outset, the Institute did not fulfil its remit and in 1899, the University of London took over half of the building as administrative offices.

This

arrangement continued until 1936 when they moved to their present site in Bloomsbury.

Between 1902 and 1953, the Imperial Institute was the subject of various committees of enquiry and changes of administration. The Board of Trade, the Colonial Office, the Department of Overseas Trade and Ministry of Education all ran the Institute.

In 1953 the government announced the

scheme for the expansion of Imperial College and by 1956 it was public knowledge that this would involve the demolition of the Imperial Institute.

The Imperial institute was to be demolished in the early 1960s. The Victorian Society, John Betjeman (Poet Laureate 1972-1984), and Sir Julian Huxley (Biologist and grandson of T.H. Huxley RSM and RCS Darwin’s Bulldog), campaigned against total demolition, and the Queen’s Tower was saved.

Between 1966 and 1968, on advice from Professor Alec Skempton and the Civil Engineering Department, work was carried out to enable the central tower to stand on its own. This involved creating massive foundations and then substantially rebuilding the lower portion of the tower.

The Queen’s Tower has since been a feature of Imperial College and can be seen from various points around London; it is sometimes floodlit at night.

Points of Interest The Queen’s tower is 287 feet tall, clad in portland stone and topped by a copper covered dome. There are 324 steps from the ground to the base of the dome. Much of the route to the top is via narrow spiral staircases.

Entrance Area Near the entrance to the tower are two large stone lions. These are two of the four lions which flanked the entrance to the Imperial Institute. On the lower staircase walls is a display of terracotta medallions commemorating famous scientists.

Medallions

Henry Cavendish (1731-1810) Wealthy aristocrat and leading English scientist in the century after Newton. Investigated electricity and chemistry; showed that hydrogen and oxygen combined to produce water.

Joseph Priestley (1733-1804) Birmingham scientist and theologian of wide interests; researched the nature of air. Emigrated to the United States in 1794 to escape political persecution.

Carl Wilhelm Scheele (1742-1786) Born in Sweden and commenced as a pharmacist, like many chemists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Experimented on gases and other substances.

Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794) One of chemistry’s most important theoreticians. Named one of the gases found by Priestley “oxygen”, as part of a reform of chemical nomenclature. Died on the guillotine during the French Revolution.

Martin Heinrich Klaproth (1743-1817) A major figure in a long tradition of chemical studies of minerals; active in the dissemination of Lavoisier’s new chemistry in Germany.

Claude Louis Berthollet (1748-1822) French chemist and friend of Lavoisier; went to Egypt with Napoleon and worked on the chemistry of solutions. Interested in the applications of science, especially the chemistry of dyestuffs.

John Dalton (1766-1844) Quaker schoolteacher living in Manchester during the Industrial Revolution; developed atomism into a useful concept for chemical analysis.

Humphry Davy (1778-1829) Applied the electrical battery (invented 1800) to the study of chemistry. Discovered sodium, potassium and other new elements, which provided spectacular displays for lectures at the Royal Institution in London. Invented the Safety Lamp.

Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac (1778-1850) An active participant in the scientific world of Paris; worked on applied chemistry, and studied the principles underlying the chemical combination of gases.

Jacob Berzelius (1779-1848) United chemistry and electricity in a synthesis bringing together the work of Dalton, Davy and others. A leading organizer of science, both internationally and in his native Sweden.

Eilhard Mitscherlich (1794-1863) German

crystallographer

and

student

of

Berzelius;

discovered

that

substances identical in crystal form could differ in chemical composition.

Heinrich Rose (1795-1864) Author of a major textbook on the theory of Berzelius. Professor of chemistry at Berlin, the most renowned centre for science at the time.

Stained Glass Windows The arched windows at the first stage now house the Plimmer stained glass windows. Henry George Plimmer was the first to describe the cancer cell inclusions which came to be known as "Plimmer's bodies", he held a Lectureship in Pathology at St. Mary's from 1898 to 1902 and then became Director of the Cancer Laboratories at the Lister Institute until his appointment to a new Chair of Comparative Pathology at Imperial College in 1915. Therefore he represents the only known early link between the histories of the two Colleges.

Plimmer was renowned for his Imperial College lectures on immunology and for "his unrivalled skill in microscopic technique" and was President of the Royal Microscopical Society in 1911-12. He was elected FRS in 1910.

He was a highly accomplished musician with an unusually extensive knowledge of art and literature.

In 1921 his widow donated these windows to the College in his memory. At the time they were believed to be by Burne-Jones, but they are now thought to be by an artist from the circle of Henry Holliday and to have been made by Powells of Whitefriars. They date from about 1890 and may have come from Plimmer's Music Room at his home in St. John's Wood. The figures represent Art, Music and Literature.

Three literary quotations appear at the bottom of the windows:

Die Zukunft decker

The future veils

Schmerzen und Glucke.

Pains and happinesses.

Schrittweis dem Blicke,

Step by step towards the sight.

Doch ungeschrecket,

But undeterred

Dringen wir vorwarts.

We press forwards

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Loge: Symbolum

La raison triomphe de la mort, et travailler pour elle c'est, travailler pour I' eternite.

Ernest Renan: Discours de Reception a I' Academie Francaise

Reason triumphs over death, and working for Reason is working for eternity.

All things of the body are as a river; those of the soul are a dream and a mist. Life is but a war, and the visit of a stranger; Fame is oblivion. What then has the power to survive? One thing only - love of knowledge.

Marcus Aurelius: Meditations, Book ll

Water tank Halfway up the Tower are the remnants of the water tank for the Imperial Institute, only the massive compound beams which supported it remain.

The Dome The internal wooden structure of the dome is an interesting example of Victorian craftsmanship.

Belfry The belfry contains the Alexandra Peal of bells; the peal consists of 10 bells and is named after Alexandra, the Princess of Wales. The bells were a gift to the Prince of Wales from Mrs Elizabeth M. Millar of Melbourne, Australia in 1892. John Taylor of the Taylor Bellfounders of Loughborough made the bells. They were rung on the opening of the Imperial Institute by Her Majesty Queen Victoria on 10th May 1893.

Each bell is separately named after members of the Royal family: Queen Victoria; her three sons: Prince Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, Prince Alfred, and Prince Arthur; her daughter-in-law Alexandra of Denmark, wife of Albert Edward; and her five Wales grand-children: Albert Victor, George, Louise, Victoria, and Maud.

The bells are now rung on Royal Anniversaries between 1 and 2pm:

6th February

- Her Majesty’s Accession (1952)

21st April

- Birthday of Her Majesty the Queen (1926)

2nd June

- Coronation Day (1953)

10th June

- Birthday of The Duke of Edinburgh (1921)

15th August

- Birthday of The Princess Royal (1950)

14th November

- Birthday of The Prince of Wales (1948)

20th November

- Her Majesty’s Wedding Day (1947)

The bells are also rung on Imperial College Commemoration Day in October and Imperial College Postgraduate Ceremony in May, the dates vary. They were rung on 14th December 2011 to commemorate the 150th Anniversary of the death of Prince Albert.

The event was organised by

Imperial College and the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851.

Imperial College Archives 2014