page_title: Watkin's Tower
section_title: Legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Watkin's Tower / Legacy
caption_attribution_description: English: View of Blackpool Tower. The last day of the season and illuminations for 2005. Taken from Central Pier
context_page_description: Watkin's Tower was a partially completed iron lattice tower in Wembley Park, London, England. Its construction was an ambitious project to create a 358-metre-high visitor attraction in Wembley Park to the north of the city, led by the railway entrepreneur Sir Edward Watkin. Marketed as the "Great Tower of London", it was designed to surpass the height of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, and it was part of Wembley Park's emergence as a recreational place. The tower was never completed and it was demolished in 1907. The site of the tower is now occupied by the English national football ground, Wembley Stadium.
context_section_description: Watkin's Folly was not the last attempt to build a notable British tower. In the north west of England, the Blackpool Tower (1894), New Brighton Tower (1896) and Morecambe Tower (1898) were also built, although only the Blackpool Tower remains standing. 
  Although Watkin's tower has gone, Wembley Park continues to attract large crowds to sporting and musical events at Wembley Stadium, and it served as a venue for both the 1948 and 2012 Summer Olympics. The station built by the Metropolitan Railway remains in service to this day, providing a major transport link for Wembley crowds via the London Underground Metropolitan and Jubilee lines.
  A large Irish pub and restaurant in the area is called Watkin's Folly.
  The story of Watkin's Tower was recounted briefly in the 1973 BBC documentary by the then Poet Laureate, Sir John Betjeman, Metro-land. In the programme, Betjeman described Watkin's vision of creating an engineering wonder in a little-known rural area north of London:
  The programme also showed some of the unsuccessful designs for the tower. The script for Metro-land can be found in Betjeman's England, a collection of writings by John Betjeman published in 2009.
  
  The history of the Watkin's Tower is also showcased in the Brent Museum located in Willesden Green Library. The museum formerly allowed visitors to build a tower before it comes tumblings down through a vibrating floor, however, this has been removed since the renovation of the library in 2015.
caption: Blackpool Tower (erected 1894)
exif: {"Image Make": "PENTAX Corporation", "Image Model": "PENTAX Optio S50", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Optio S50 Ver 1.00", "Image DateTime": "2005:11:06 16:03:57", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "590", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 51, 48, 48, 0, 0, 33, 0, 1, 0, 22, 0, ... ]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "31176", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6298", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/160", "EXIF FNumber": "31/5", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "50", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2005:11:06 16:03:57", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2005:11:06 16:03:57", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "265229/102400", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "14/5", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, auto mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "61/5", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2560", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1920", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "31040", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "0", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "74", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0"}