Here’s a fun fact to whip out at your next family gathering or after-work drinks with your colleagues: London almost had its very own Eiffel Tower. Unfortunately, the plan never reached fruition, even though building work did start on the structure. Instead, the Watkins Tower, as it would have been known, has since been lost to the sands of time.
Don’t fancy reading? Our own Tom has made a handy little video to explain it all:
The idea for the tower came after Sir Edward Watkin, a British Member of Parliament and railway entrepreneur, went on holiday to Paris. He saw the city’s now infamous Eiffel Tower, which had just been finished, and decided London needed one of its own. But, naturally, it had to be even bigger and more impressive than the French tower.
The Watkins Tower
The tower was conceived in response to Paris’ Eiffel Tower, and was designed to be even taller than the French landmark. It was part of a plan to bring more people to Wembley Park, as part of an attempt to make the area more of a tourist attraction.
Marketed as the “Great Tower of London”, the structure would have stood a whopping 358 metres (or 1,175 ft) high if it had been built. For context, the Eiffel Tower is 330 metres tall. And that’s taller than it used to be – previously measuring 312 metres before they installed the antennas. And London’s Shard is just 310 metres. So, if the building had ever really been constructed, it would have been a pretty impressive sight.
Unfortunately, the building ran into all kinds of issues. The work was delayed and behind schedule, the foundations were found to be unstable, money ran out, and the construction was ultimately halted. The unfinished tower was subsequently demolished.
So, where is it now? Well, the site that would have been the Watkin’s Tower is now home to Wembley Stadium. So the site did fulfil its purpose, in the end, in driving tourism and visitors to the area! Just in rather a different guise…
