Monday! A lovely day to read of a subterranean architectural folly...and of a swindler.
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Monday:
BadKitties
Tuesday:
ejoanna
Wednesday:
Caedy
Thursday:
art ah zen
Friday:
FloridaSNMOM
Saturday:
Most Awesome Nana
Sunday:
loggersbrat
The lavish mansion
I first saw pictures of the "Witley Wonder" on my Facebook feed. Intrigued, I wanted to learn more about it. It is an underwater ballroom/conservatory/smoking theater that was originally constructed as part of an extremely lavish estate in Surrey, England.
The atrium
The main house on the estate was a 32-room mansion, and Wright had three artificial lakes constructed, the 9,000+ acres lavishly landscaped and reeking of wealth and means. Perhaps the most famous addition to the palatial properties was the underground conservatory/smoking room with aquarium windows, an epic statue seemingly rising out of the manufactured lake on the underwater dome that gave the glorious below-ground room a ballroom-like appearance.
Whitaker Wright wore many hats throughout the years, but when he finally settled into something, it was something big - big and illegal. London and Globe Company floated stock and bonds in the realm of the mining industry, and at first Whitaker's business dealings were simply misleading, not particularly criminal. The line was crossed into outright swindling when, after floating a large, unwieldy bond issue for the Waterloo Railway (an expensive endeavor quite out of his usual comfort zone) everything went south, straining his finances. To keep investors from seeing him struggle, he began to issue himself a series of loans and shuttle them between his companies. Unable to keep things afloat, in 1900 he fled, leaving his floundering investors in a panic, and single-handedly terrorizing London's exchange.
Now considered a scourge and a scoundrel, Wright was retrieved and forced to stand trial. Needless to say, it didn't go well. Convicted of fraud, he was sentenced to seven years in prison by the Royal Courts of Justice in 1904. In a court anteroom, Whitaker Wright took his own life by swallowing a cyanide pill immediately after sentencing, and was found dead on the floor with a revolver in his pocket--assumed to serve as a backup in case the cyanide failed to finish the job.
Atlas Obscura
The construction of the ballroom was surely a marvel for its time:
The stairway
On August 11, 1903, Australian newspaper The West Gippsland Gazette described the subterranean room thusly:
Descending the stairs one comes to a subway, 400 feet long, lighted by rows of electric lamps. The passage leads into a great chamber of glass thirty feet in height — a beautiful conservatory with a wondrous mosaic floor, settees and chairs, palms, and little tables. Outside the clear crystal glass is a curtain of green water, and goldfish come and press their noses against the glass. This submerged fairy-room with appendages cost fully £20,000. It was built, of course, with the utmost care for if one of the square panes of three-inch glass should break, the place would be filled with water within five minutes.
Slate
The statue of Neptune stands atop the ballroom
Whitaker Wright infuriated his neighbors when he built his estate and destroyed the Surrey landscape.
This underwater ballroom is the last, mad, magnificent fragment of a Victorian fantasy world that made Michael Jackson’s Neverland look like a dull municipal park.
To create it, 600 workmen dug out four lakes, swept aside hills that got in the way of the view, and built a 32-room neo-Tudor house which was packed with treasures from across the world, including Italian statues and a bronze dolphin’s head so big that it got stuck under a bridge on the way from Southampton. (They had to lower the road to get it out.)
Most of this architectural fantasia has gone now. The house, gutted by fire in 1952, was later demolished. A few forlorn lodges and some stables survive.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/...
Whitaker Wright
He was apparently the Bernie Madoff of his time, a swindler on a truly large scale. The details of his swindle are quite interesting. The Slate article is the most thorough.
He had married an American woman, and after his financial crimes were exposed, ran to New York to hide. He was caught and extradited. The estate was broken up and sold after his death, and Witley Park (renamed by the new owner) is now privately owned and not open to the public.
Hope that everyone has a great Monday! I hope to be around, but I may need to drive a friend to an appointment.