page_title: Wyld's Great Globe
section_title: Construction
hierarchical_section_title: Wyld's Great Globe / Construction
caption_attribution_description: English: Plan of the Great Globe which stood in Leicester Square from 1851 to 1862
context_page_description: Wyld's Great Globe was an attraction situated in London's Leicester Square between 1851 and 1862, constructed by James Wyld, a distinguished mapmaker and former Member of Parliament for Bodmin.
  At the centre of a purpose-built hall was a giant globe, 60 feet 4 inches in diameter. The globe was hollow and contained a staircase and elevated platforms which members of the public could climb in order to view the surface of the earth on its concave interior, modelled in plaster of Paris, complete with mountain ranges and rivers all to scale. Punch described the attraction as "a geographical globule which the mind can take in at one swallow." In the surrounding galleries were displays of Wyld's maps, globes and surveying equipment.
  Wyld originally proposed that the globe should be constructed at the Great Exhibition, but its size and Wyld's desire to run it as a promotional venture precluded it from being featured inside the Crystal Palace, so Wyld negotiated with the owners of the gardens of Leicester Square, and after much wrangling secured an agreement to site it there for ten years.
caption: The plan for the Great Globe as published in The Builder on 5 April 1851. The exterior galleries shown in the plan were not finished until after the attraction opened.
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