Joseph Paxton

Sir Joseph Paxton (3 August 1803 to 8 June 1865) was an English gardener, architect and engineer who designed the Crystal Palace, the vast prefabricated iron and glass building erected in Hyde Park to house the Great Exhibition of 1851 and later re-erected at Sydenham. Paxton began his career as a garden boy at the age of fifteen and rose to become head gardener at Chatsworth House for the Duke of Devonshire, where in 1836 he built the Great Conservatory, one of the largest glasshouses of its day, and later a smaller glasshouse to cultivate the giant Amazonian water lily Victoria amazonica. The ribbed structure of the water lily's huge floating leaves, which Paxton tested by floating his young daughter Annie on one, inspired the ridge and furrow glass and iron system he scaled up for the Crystal Palace. He was knighted for the Crystal Palace's success alongside his fellow builders and went on to sit as a Liberal Member of Parliament.