The Festival of Britain

The Festival of Britain was in the summer of 1951 and celebrated the UK's recovery after the Second World War. Although it was a national festival, London was at its heart. The most important site was the South Bank of the Thames at Lambeth. Here, an area of old Victorian industrial buildings and railway sidings was transformed into the site of the South Bank exhibition. New buildings were built to house exhibitions exploring Britain's landscape, the British character, British industry and science. The buildings included a new concert hall - the Royal Festival Hall, the Dome of Discovery and the Skylon. The only existing building incorporated into the site was a tall brick shot tower, built in the early 19th century to make lead shot by dropping molten lead from a height. For the festival, it was used to house a large radio telescope and transmitter.Although the Festival took pride in Britain's past, most of the exhibits looked to the future. Science and technology featured strongly. In one of the pavilions, many Londoners saw their first ever television pictures. The festival also took place on other sites in London such as Battersea Park where a large funfair built. In Poplar, east London, a new housing estate was built as a 'live architecture exhibition', a kind of model village. The Lansbury Estate was designed to incorporate all the latest thinking about architecture, planning and communities. Over the summer, the Festival of Britain was everywhere: in shops, events, exhibitions, radio programmes and concert halls. The Trinidadian All Steel Percussion Orchestra came to play in London which was the first time steel pan music had been played formally in the capital. Although most of the festival structures were demolished at the end of 1951, the Royal Festival Hall was retained. It became the first in a group of arts-related buildings on the South Bank that, by the end of the century, included the National Theatre and the National Film Theatre.

http://www.20thcenturylondon.org.uk/festival-britain-1951