Wyld's Great Globe (also known as Wyld's Globe or Wyld's Monster Globe) was an attraction situated in London's Leicester Square between 1851 and 1862, constructed by James Wyld (1812–1887), a distinguished mapmaker and former Member of Parliament for Bodmin.
At the centre of a purpose-built hall was a giant globe, in diameter. The globe was hollow and contained a staircase and elevated platforms which members of the public could climb in order to view the surface of the Earth on its concave interior, modelled in plaster of Paris, complete with mountain ranges and rivers all to scale. Punch described the attraction as "a geographical globule which the mind can take in at one swallow." In the surrounding galleries were displays of Wyld's maps, globes and surveying equipment.
Wyld originally proposed that the globe should be constructed at the Great Exhibition, but its size and Wyld's desire to run it as a promotional venture precluded it from being featured inside the Crystal Palace, so Wyld negotiated with the owners of the gardens of Leicester Square, and after much wrangling secured an agreement to site it there for ten years. The exhibition hall and model of the Earth were hastily constructed to coincide with the Great Exhibition.
In its first year the Great Globe was a resounding success, with visitor numbers second only to those of the Great Exhibition, but from 1852 onward public interest in the attraction slowly waned. Though the novelty of a concave globe continued to win accolades for Wyld, he was faced with competition from other educational attractions, and had to adapt the entertainments on offer in order to maintain visitor numbers. Wyld held topical exhibitions and gave lectures on current events, and attempted to transfer ownership of the attraction to the "Cosmos Institute" to establish a national geographic and ethnological museum. In 1862, when Wyld's agreement for the use of the land expired, the exhibition hall was removed and the globe broken up and sold for scrap. The complicated ownership of Leicester Square gardens, combined with Wyld's failure to honour his agreement to restore the gardens after the removal of the exhibition building, led to extensive legal wrangling and questions in Parliament. Wyld finally sold his interests in the gardens, and in 1874 they were donated to the City of London.
Although there were other proposals for giant globes, and a few were constructed, it was not until 1935 that a large concave globe was recreated in the form of Chester Lindsay Churchill's Mapparium at the Mary Baker Eddy Library in Boston, Massachusetts.
James Wyld
James Wyld was a noted geographer and map-seller. He was the eldest son of James Wyld the Elder (1790–1836) and Eliza (née Legg). In 1838, he married Anne, the daughter of John Hester, and had two children, one of whom, James John Cooper Wyld also became a map publisher. On his father's death in 1836, Wyld became the sole owner of the thriving family mapmaking business based in Charing Cross. His maps, which covered regions as diverse as London and the gold fields of California, were regarded highly, and Wyld himself had an excellent reputation as a mapmaker; he was elected as a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 1839, and he was appointed Geographer to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert (as had been his father before him).
He had an opportunistic approach to the business and was a prolific publisher of maps and guides (so much so that Punch claimed that if a country were discovered in the interior of the Earth Wyld would produce a map of it "as soon as it is discovered, if not before"), but his projects were not always successful; although he profited from the "Railway Mania" of the later 1830s, he became entangled in a number of court cases with unsuccessful railway companies as a result, and he overreached himself by printing maps and guides of the London rail network which included stations and connections that were planned but subsequently not built. He helped start both the Association of Surveyors and the Surveyors' Institution to lobby against the Ordnance Survey, as he felt its activities threatened his business, but when these associations failed, he pragmatically got his company appointed as one of the six official outlets for the new OS maps. He had an account at the Royal British Bank, which collapsed in 1856, wiping out the savings of many of the depositors, but the extent of his losses is not recorded.Wyld was the chairman of the depositors committee which managed to negotiate a favourable return of 15 shillings in the pound from the shareholders
He was also the Liberal MP for Bodmin, though his political career was on hiatus for much of the time that he managed the Great Globe. On his first election in 1848 there were charges of bribery at the polling stations, although it was decided that these accusations could not be substantiated, and he was allowed to take up his seat. His idea for the Great Globe had been many years in the formulation: a correspondent of Notes and Queries mentioned that as early as 1839, Wyld had broached the subject of a concave globe at a meeting to discuss an earlier giant globe project.This plan by William Vialls for a georama in London never progressed past the planning stage.
Site Wyld had approached the organizing committee of the Great Exhibition with a plan to erect a giant globe within the exhibition hall. Although he presented it as an educational attraction, Wyld's ulterior motive was to use the globe to promote his map-making business. The size of the proposed exhibit and the organizers' decision that no commercial enterprises should use the exhibition as a platform to sell their goods or services led to the rejection of Wyld's plan. Undaunted, Wyld began to search for an alternate location for his project; the reason later given for not building within the Crystal Palace was purely the lack of space rather than any rejection by the organizing committee of the commercial aspect of the project. An article in The Builder on 30 November 1850 mentioned that negotiations were already underway to secure the gardens of Leicester Square. Described in Charles Dickens' Household Words as a "howling desert", the gardens were at that time an insalubrious area, "with broken railings, a receptacle for dead cats and every kind of abomination"Yates p.34 and a meeting place for "ne'er well-to-do youths".Black p.29 Leicester Square had been Prince Albert's initial choice as a site for the Great Exhibition building, but the site was quickly dismissed as too small.Altick p.230Gibbs-Smith p.6
Wyld made an agreement with the owner of the gardens, Pheobe Moxhay, to acquire the freehold for £3,000, but the Tulk family, who owned the buildings on three sides of the square and already had a judgement against Moxhay's late husband, Edward Moxhay, would have been able to prevent Wyld building. They used this hold over him to negotiate a favourable deal for themselves: they would allow Wyld to use the land for ten years from 25 April 1851, after which he would remove any buildings that he had erected within six months, and each branch of the Tulk family would have a one-year option to buy half the land for £500.The Tulk family had bought part of the Leicester Square estate around 1758 and by an agreement in 1807 John Augustus Tulk had divided the estate with his eldest son Charles Augustus Tulk. Although Wyld and the Tulks attempted to negotiate with the owner of the buildings on the north side of the square, Henry Webb, they were not able to reach an agreement, and they eventually signed the contract without his assent. When Wyld began to prepare the site, Webb announced his intention to take out an injunction to prevent the building work proceeding. Wyld restarted negotiations with Webb and eventually (in July 1851, over a month after the building had been completed) Webb agreed to allow the ten-year agreement with the Tulks to stand.
Wyld obviously still felt insecure about his claim on the land and, although he was not an MP himself between 1852 and 1857, over the years a number of bills surfaced in Parliament aimed at either establishing the title to the gardens in his favour or confirming the validity of the erection of the globe building. It appears that Wyld initially intended to seek public funding for the construction but after an estimate of the costs he considered it was unlikely that he would be able to secure reimbursement and decided instead on a purely commercial venture.Wyld p.xi
Construction
Planning Through an advertisement in The Builder, Wyld contracted Edward Welch as the architect for the project. Welch submitted his first set of plans in January 1851. These plans included the construction of four theatres which Wyld planned to rent out to recoup his expenses, but there was vigorous opposition from the residents of the square, and when Wyld put the plans out to tender, the cheapest quote – from George Myers – was £2,561. Welch negotiated this down to £1,888, but Wyld informed Welch that he considered the price prohibitive. As he was embroiled in negotiations with Henry Webb at the same time, Wyld decided that he would have to settle for something less ambitious and to "give up a great part of the original design of the building". He showed Welch's initial designs to the architect H.R. Abraham who considered that they were impractical. Wyld was worried about Welch's ability to meet his deadlines and asked him to pass any plans to Abraham for approval.
On 4 February, Wyld met with the residents of Leicester Square to present his plans for the gardens. At this meeting he claimed that in addition to the £3,000 he had paid for the freehold he had also agreed to pay £4,500 for the building and the works would cost £12,000; he would have to spend around £21,800 on the project in total, which included the outlay for new gardens and a new enclosure railing. After much discussion and receiving various assurances from Wyld that he would restore the gardens when the building was removed, the residents' committee approved his plan.
On 24 February, Wyld asked Welch to retire from the project, promising that he would be paid for the work he had done so far. Wyld then contracted Abraham to produce new plans. Abraham's designs included a new supporting wall for the globe itself (correcting what he saw as Welch's error of leaving the trusses unsupported), as well as buildings to cover the whole area of the gardens which Wyld would be able to rent out to recoup some of his costs. Despite what he had told the residents' committee, Wyld had set a budget of £2,000 for the entire building work and so could not afford the outlying buildings. Abraham's designs – minus the additional buildings, but with a circular Moorish corridor designed by G.A. JermynSometimes seen as G.R. Jermyn – got the final go-ahead on 15 March 1851, even though the new bids for the contract were substantially higher than they had been for Welch's original plans. George Myers' firm was again the cheapest at £2,755 and he was contracted to continue with the work. Both Welch and Abraham were eventually forced to sue to get their fees.
Building work