Recreating one of the biggest and greatest world fairs from the Victorian era might seem like a Herculean task, but it was an idea that Victoria creator Daisy Goodwin relished from the moment she began work on the ITV drama.
As it turns out, Prince Albert’s Great Exhibition of 1851 – complete with stuffed animals and glass horse statues – makes a fittingly epic setting for the final episode of series three of the regal TV show.
“I’ve been looking forward to writing this since I started,” Goodwin said. “It was a joy to write.”
The Great Exhibition – or to give it its full title, Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations – was an international event in which countries from all over the world were invited to present exciting artefacts and pioneering products in a giant temporary glass palace structure that was erected in Hyde Park.
More than six million people – a third of the British population at the time – visited it during the five months it was on display and it brought in more than £19 million of today’s money that was then used to fund the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Science Museum and the Natural History Museum.
Read more:
The Great Exhibition: the true story of the 1851 Crystal Palace extravaganza
This weekend’s final episode is centred around the event, and sees Arthur suffering with the stress of creating his project, the backlash from the public before it is unveiled, and the Queen having to support and defend the expensive show to her people.
A budgeting nightmare
While it wasn’t quite as fraught a production for Goodwin, it still came with its own challenges. “It’s been a bit of a nightmare because it’s the last episode in the series and of course you spend all your money on episode one. There was a lot of ‘how are we going to afford this?’ but I said ‘it’s got to be amazing otherwise we shouldn’t do it’ so there was a lot of soul searching about that, but we have finally got there.”
As with the rest of the series, which stars Jenna Coleman as HRH and Tom Hughes as Albert – Goodwin has mined historical documents and Victoria’s own diaries to faithfully recreate the event, including the items within the exhibition, and which ones got the royal seal of approval.
A weasel wedding
“You get a sense of the incredible scale of it and just the extraordinary, eclectic mix of stuff that was in there,” she says. “There was a lot of taxidermy, everything from a stuffed elephant to a weasel wedding, literally stuffed weasels wearing wedding outfits, there were actually in there, so we had them in the show. That was Victoria’s favourite exhibit. Then I read something about there being a penknife with 182 blades and they made that for the show in there. It’s incredible.”
While the original venue for the Victorian-era event was an architectural feat of giant glass palace, it was eventually moved to Sydenham Hill in south-east London – an area now known as Crystal Palace – but burned down in 1936, meaning Goodwin and the production team had to find a new location to transform into the massive greenhouse.
On location in Liverpool
They settled on The Palm House in Sefton Park in Liverpool, a Grade II three-tier dome conservatory exotic plant-filled greenhouse, designed and built by MacKenzie and Moncur of Edinburgh which opened in 1896.
Goodwin says: “It was incredible, it looks so much like it, it’s not on the same scale but with a bit of CGI, it’s brilliant, you can really get a sense of it. We then recreated the interiors in an aircraft hanger.”
In the final episode, viewers will see the drama of the Duke of Monmouth’s cruel treatment of his wife, Sophie, and scheming Lord Palmerston (Laurence Fox) meddle in European monarchies, all played out among the grand backdrop of the exhibition with a dramatic ending to this current run.
Goodwin says: “I think people will be amazed by it and that’s what’s wonderful, as it’s part of history that you never see. None of the stuff has been covered in the series before.”
The question is, what effect does toiling over the grand exhibition have on Albert’s increasingly ill health? That’s something fans will have to wait until series four to find out.
The final episode of Victoria is on ITV on Sunday 12 May at 9pm.
