The
Crystal Palace
Foundation

By Elizabeth Wilhide

Published in co-operation with the New Millennium Experience Company.

The Great Exhibition building in Hyde Park was amazing.

The Crystal Palace exhibition building and grounds at Sydenham were amazing.

The Millennium Dome is equally amazing

As a structure the Dome is amazing. Whatever your views on the political and monetary aspects, the engineering and tight time schedule to bring it into being is almost unbelievable. With government indecision on site and budget eating away at the millennium deadline, final design ideas for the structure could not be finalised. Once those decisions were taken it became a race against time to complete the structure. The book covers this race with chapter titles such as 'The birth of the Dome', 'Running the project', 'Siteworks', and many more. As well as text, some 250 excellent photographs of the work in progress are included. They show the construction of the 12 steel masts at the Bolton works of Watson Steel. They also won the cabling contract which was sub-contracted to Briden International from Doncaster. Every part of the construction is followed photographically - 8,000 piles were driven in 13 weeks, all masts were erected in two weeks. The very special relationship that developed between the various contractors was evidently unique.

191 pages hardback dozens of images