The State and Science

Abstract

It is curious that in the growing involvement of the state with science in Victorian Britain, a process that involved amongst other things the greater democratisation of science, a name that occurs at several crucial points is unquestionably aristocratic. The Dukes of Devonshire had immense wealth and much land, including the famous estate of Chatsworth. Their ancestry included two families that had produced distinguished men of science: the Hon. Robert Boyle and the Hon. Henry Cavendish. The sixth Duke, who died in 1858, is ironically remembered chiefly for his head gardener and estate manager, one Joseph Paxton (1803–65). This enterprising horticulturist, who had attained a national reputation by the 1830s, constructed two large conservatories at Chatsworth in which he even upstaged the Royal Gardens at Kew by feats of remarkable technical prowess.¹ On the basis of that experience he was able to design that pioneering structure of glass and iron which was to house the Great Exhibition in London of 1851. Rather than destroying many of the fine trees in Hyde Park, it was proposed to build a vast Exhibition Hall to enclose them.² The result was a building covering twenty acres with nearly one million square feet of glass supported by 3300 iron columns.