Crystal Palace Dinosaurs
The first dinosaur sculptures ever built, free in a south London park, a herd of gloriously wonky Victorian monsters made in 1854, years before anyone really knew what dinosaurs looked like.
FREE
The lowdown
Long before anyone had a clear idea what a dinosaur was, the Victorians built some anyway. The Crystal Palace Dinosaurs, made by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins in 1854, are the first dinosaur sculptures in the world, and more than thirty of them still lurk among the trees and lakes of Crystal Palace Park, free to visit.
They are magnificently wrong, which is the joy of them. The iguanodon has a horn on its nose that turned out to be a thumb spike, the creatures stand like overgrown lizards, and the science has moved on by a century and a half. They were cutting edge in their day, unveiled even before Darwin published On the Origin of Species.
Grade I listed and recently restored, they sit on islands in the lower lake, so you view this prehistoric scene from across the water as if you have stumbled on a lost world. It is free, it is gently surreal and it is one of the most charming afternoons in south London.
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