main content Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins (1807-1889)

'Fossil Villa', 22 Belvedere Road, Anerley

Creator of the famous prehistoric ‘monsters’, designed as part of the geological gardens within Crystal Palace Park. They represent the few remaining artefacts of the great exhibition, which moved from Hyde Park to Penge Place in 1854.

Hawkins was an artist and sculptor famed for his depiction of natural history subjects. Exhibited at the Royal Academy and the British Institute between 1832 and 1849, his studies in bronze were presented as gifts from Queen Victoria to the Zoological Society and from the Society to the Emperor of Russia in 1849.

Commissioned to build ‘antediluvian animals’ for the newly formed Crystal Palace Company in 1852, he had originally planned to produce sculptures of the larger mammals such as Mastodon, but included reptiles from the Mesozoic period as well.
He was drawn to the developing area around the parkland and moved with his family to ‘Fossil Villa’, 22 Belvedere Road, Anerley, living there between 1856 and 1872.

Hawkins’s work represents an ingenious approach to large design structures. The standing Iguanodon is composed of 4 iron columns, 600 bricks, 650 five inch half round drain tiles, 900 plain tiles, 38 casks of cement, 90 casks of broken stone, 100ft of iron hooping and 20ft of cube inch bar.