The Padorama, an immersive journey from Manchester to Liverpool in 1834: Part 1 London

The first modern railway, the Liverpool & Manchester, opened in 1830 and by 1834 construction of railways into London, notably the London & Greenwich, was already in progress. To accompany this seismic shift in mobility a moving panorama of the Liverpool & Manchester was presented at the Baker Street Bazaar in London between mid-May and early September of 1834.

It appears to have been based on images presented in a book, the Railway Companion, published the previous year and written by the somewhat cryptically named A Tourist with images credited to an obscure H. West. Most of the images recur in the Descriptive Catalogue that was on sale alongside the panorama, an exception being the picture of the Oldfield Lane cattle station which by this time had closed and moved to Charles Street adjacent to the Liverpool Road station in Manchester. The book by contrast omits the image of the Patricroft Tavern (now the Queen’s Arms) and Bridgewater Canal. Both omit images of Flow and Chat Moss deemed presumably of less artistic interest (these appear on a compilation panorama).

As ever, much conjecture and a work-in-progress. A talk on this subject with animated visuals was given at the OpenSim Community Conference 2024. Much background was derived from Huhtamo (2013) Illusions in Motion, MIT Press.

Sponsors and target audience

The lack of attribution carries over to the panorama itself. Somewhat atypically there is no company named in the copious advertising and no artists named beyond making general claims for their ability. Freeman (1999) has suggested that much of the artwork published alongside the launch of the railway was sponsored by the railway company and the same may be true of the Padorama. However, its cost would have been orders of magnitude greater and hence greatly displeased shareholders. It is possible therefore that the panorama was funded by the “Liverpool men” who were seeking further railway investment opportunities at the time or a similar group based in London.

If indeed it was the “Liverpool men” there may have been a degree of self-congratulation that their faith and investment in the Stephensons had been vindicated in the face of Parliament’s initial rejection. The Padorama may have been intended to celebrate the success of the railway while perhaps also attempting to assuage fears as to the future impact of its expansion on both town and country.

One unique feature of the Padorama was that it was displayed continuously, there being no set performance times. This may have increased footfall but may also have been particularly amenable to business people dropping in during a spare half hour. The venue, the Baker Street Bazaar, was aimed at the nobility and gentry and both groups may have been regarded as potential investors in future rail projects. The Padorama thus served as a (doubtless sanitised) briefing for those who had not experienced the actual railway or who had been exposed primarily via the newspapers to its adverse consequences in terms of railway accidents.

A final group identified in the advertising comprises juveniles who were encouraged to see the panorama as a mix of entertainment and education during their summer holidays. While there may have been an element of pester power intended here, it is also possible that the Padorama investors were targeting the engineers of the future.

Production company

While the vast majority of advertisements and reviews fail to name the production company involved, two sources identify Messrs. Marshall, a prominent purveyor of moving panoramas in the capital and elsewhere. Founded by the Scot Peter Marshall, the company was well-regarded and among its products was a very popular rendition of the coronation ceremony and procession of King George IV. This features in a satirical cartoon that reflects the high level of interest in moving panoramas at the time.

Marshall, however, died in 1826 and, according to Huhtamo, under Peter’s son William the company had largely (but not entirely) withdrawn from London. Moreover, the venue, Spring Gardens, whose entrance is shown in the cartoon had closed and been demolished by 1834. Nevertheless, something had enticed Marshall’s to develop the Padorama and it may have been both the sponsorship and the technical challenge as the Padorama had novel features.

Moving panoramas

Moving panoramas were in all likelihood diverse in terms of their viewer experience and (hidden) mechanics. At their simplest a painted canvas was spooled across a viewing aperture, a stage-like proscenium, from one spindle to another by two operators (“crankists”) manually hand-cranking. By contrast the Padorama, presumably by virtue of its size and continuous operation, required a steam engine which was likely in another room or building and driving the mechanism via a belt and pulley system.

Marshall’s were known primarily for their peristrephic panoramas in which the painted canvas scrolled in a concave arc in front of the seated viewers (Plunkett maintains it was convex). The word “peristrephic” featured prominently in their normal advertising but was notably absent from the Padorama coverage. The book and descriptive catalogue, presumably both from Marshall’s, talk instead of a mechanicographicorama delivered via a disyntrechon. This is, l assume, a reference to the other unique features of the Padorama, a moving foreground as well as moving trains.

The artists

It is possible that the sketches that appear in the book and catalogue were made by William Marshall or someone he employed (H. West perhaps) and the final versions developed at scale by a team of scene painters. Moving panoramas had become a popular part of many theatrical productions and their lead artists were sometimes named prominently on the playbill. It was a natural development when the same artists were engaged to develop moving panoramas for display in other venues.

Perhaps the pre-eminent scene-painter of the time was Clarkson Stanfield (1793-1867) and one source refers to the Padorama as having been painted under his supervision. This may, however, be a clever way of crediting his only student, Philip Phillips (1802-1864), who is named in a separate source. Phillips would have led a team of painters and, indeed, one source criticizes the uneven quality of the pictures as well as making more general comments about the unexceptional nature of the countryside between Manchester and Liverpool.

Stanfield was a resident scene painter at the prestigious Theatre Royal, Drury Lane where Phillips presumably worked as well (he later went to the Surrey Theatre). Stanfield quit the theatre over “creative differences” in December 1834 and at the same time largely retired from scene and panorama painting in favour of less arduous easel painting although he did occasional panoramas thereafter for friends. His involvement, if any, in the Padorama was possibly his last panorama.

The venue

The use of a Bazaar as venue was not unusual. Large-scale art had been displayed at Baker Street previously and Stanfield, for example, had previously used the Royal Bazaar, Oxford Street under the auspices of his British Diorama company. His large diorama of York Minster in flames was inadvertently set on fire by an operator igniting chemicals to give a red flame effect behind the canvas. Unfortunately this also led to the total destruction of the (well-insured) bazaar although Stanfield did display there again subsequently.

At Spring Gardens Marshall’s used the Great Room, presumably a function suite for balls and banquets, as well as the presumably smaller Lower Great Room. There was similarly a Great Room at the Baker Street Bazaar which was used for exhibitions, most notably Madame Tussaud’s waxworks from 1835. It would have had the ceiling space to accommodate a large canvas but it appears that it was being used for furniture sales in 1834.

Much of what we know of the layout of the Bazaar dates from later insurance maps. However, most of it was off-street, hidden behind shops and residences, one of which was converted to an entrance with a portico. Its origins, however, were as a barracks for the Life Guards, part of the Household Cavalry. Subsequently it became a Horse Bazaar (it was trading as such in 1833 under its new owner MC Allen, the previous one having gone bankrupt in 1832) and later still sold carriages and tack before diversifying still further into high quality home furnishings.

The central area was therefore presumably given over to stables surrounding a large parade ground and this may have been the location of a purpose-built theatre, albeit temporary and likely wooden. It is hard to imagine that the theatre could be anything but disruptive for the horse trade in the immediate vicinity and it is possible that some of the stables were vacated in favour of Mr Allen’s other establishment, Aldridge’s Repository.

It seems likely that the entrance to the former Parade Ground was via King Street at this time.

The theatre

One source cites a visit to the “Rotunda” in order to see the Padorama. Such structures were relatively commonplace (there was one on Bold Street, Liverpool built for static panorama viewing) and were typically cylindrical or hexagonal with domed or pointed roofs. Normally static panoramas were draped from the walls and viewers stood on a central platform half-way up the picture as specified in Barker’s original panorama patent. Lighting was typically via glazing in the roof. This was diffused by a canopy above the platform which also obscured the top of the panorama and the means of attachment. An analogous skirt at the bottom of the platform hid the base of the platform and possibly the flooring also although often there was a surround at the base which continued the theme of the painting and potentially had related artefacts scattered about.

Viewers would pay their entrance fee (1 shilling in this case, equivalent to about £3.50 now), optionally purchase a descriptive catalogue for the same price and then walk along a dimly lit passage leading to a stairwell either external or integral to the platform (the latter would presumably be the case here). As they emerged onto the platform they would immediately be struck by the brightly lit immersive image moving slowly before them.

In the case of static panoramas the diverging sight lines were centred on the middle of the platform which worked well for cityscapes seen from an elevated position (the top of the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral is a classic example for London). Whether circular moving panoramas were painted in similar fashion is unclear.

The paintings

The images in the Railway Companion book all have an aspect ratio of around 2.5. According to Odell, the proscenium in the New York version was 40-50 feet wide by 24 feet tall although it was noted that this was half as big again as the original 10000 square feet, the gold standard for value for money in terms of entrance fee. I am assuming that the images used in London were 45 feet x 18 feet, an aspect ratio again of 2.5. That makes a total of 540 feet in length and 9,750 square feet in area, close enough to the target. The complete performance took about 25 minutes so each of the twelve images was visible for about 2 minutes.

The images were distributed across the 31 miles between the two towns with clusters at Manchester and Newton-le-Willows and a solitary view at Edge Hill for Liverpool. The focus was on civil and mechanical engineering with viaducts, bridges and locomotives featuring prominently as well as the Moorish Arch and a distant view of the tunnels at Liverpool. All apart from the Sankey Viaduct (?) are north-facing and some are distant views while others are trackside. In modern terms the overall effect as the image passes would be of a slow-moving, heavily edited tracking shot showing the most interesting parts of the line (as the descriptive catalogue makes clear).

Some sources did remark on the exclusion of notable features such as the embankment at Huyton and the Olive Mount cutting. The skew bridge at Rainhill is also a notable absentee and there is no mention of the use of banking engines or indeed of the cable-hauling in the tunnels at Liverpool.

To display all the images simultaneously would require a cylindrical building with a diameter of about 170 feet which seems improbable under the circumstances. Based on the Liverpool Rotunda, a diameter of 50 feet, perhaps a little more seems appropriate given the site and temporary nature of the structure. This implies that Marshall’s must have had a means either of “compressing” the image, for example, by a serpentine arrangement of rollers, or else remove and replace images “on the fly” (something that US inventor Robert Fulton addressed for static paintings during his stay in Paris). All of this would take place out of sight of the viewer behind a curtain or partition. This is presumably the feat “men of science” deemed impossible in one of the sources.

Lighting

The original dioramas were lit by natural light with viewers in a darkened room. Stanfield, however, preferred gaslight and theatres had been generating their own supply in the absence of a public one. The Bazaar may have done the same given it too had been gaslit since the end of the previous decade. The decision to close at dusk/6pm must therefore have been for operational reasons such as site normal opening hours.

Some sources refer to diorama-like effects, particularly in the lane scenes. This may simply have been casting of shadows with shutters and coloured light created by interposing appropriate filters. One source comments that the season depicted was between summer and autumn (are those leaves being collected at Parkside?) so lighting may have been designed accordingly.

The classic diorama often depended on back-illumination in order for figures painted on the reverse to magically appear on the front through the thin calico canvas. Similarly the movement of a moon could be simulated with a candle in a tin can and water movement in rivers by rippling the canvas. However, none of this is possible if the canvas is directly adjacent to the wall as here.

Sound effects

One source comments on the rumbling of the train as it approached and the falling off of the sound as it passed. Whether this was due to the train, a deliberate built-in sound effect or simply the noise of the machinery moving the foreground is unclear. The proprietor claimed to have been worried that the sound of the trains would alarm people but this may have been showmanship.

No other sound effects are noted and there are, for example, comments regarding other diorama performances that nobody needed to hear the sound of water. Tremendous creativity was expended elsewhere in the cause of simulating reality but the continuous nature of the Padorama performance may have been a constraint.

Likewise, popular panoramas often had a musical accompaniment, possibly to hide the noise of the machinery. This too is probably absent.

Continuity

The images were presented in the order the voyager would have encountered them with a generic view of a locomotive, the atypical Caledonian with twin vertical cylinders, to mark the beginning. The first two views of Manchester are distance views but thereafter the perspective is roughly trackside until Newton and the Sankey viaduct (the treatment of Flow and Chat Moss is unknown) so there would have been plenty of opportunity to run the model trains along the double track during the middle segment.

Moving panoramas often depended on lecturers to interpret the image and entertain the audience. The continuous nature of the performance again makes this unlikely so the audience would have to read the descriptive catalogue for information which suggests the platform was adequately lit. However, according to Plunkett, Sinclair displayed a panorama in Bristol in 1829 that ran continuously from 10am - 10pm without mention of a steam engine. The topic, the Battle of Navarino, is likely to have required a lecturer so it may simply have been that teams worked shifts to cover the day.

The trains

A number of steam locomotives are shown on the paintings, including a close-up of Caledonian with its unusual vertical cylinders, one of many evolutionary dead-ends on what was a highly experimental railway.

Whether the trains were hauled by actual steam engines seems unlikely given both the potential fire hazard and the labour needed to keep them in steam. Huhtamo suggests they were cardboard cut-outs but sources indicate they were far more realistic and one must assume that as a minimum wheels were turning and smoke emitted from an appropriately contained source. Possibly they were pulled along by a discreetly hidden cable.

One viewer refers to the model passengers in open carriages as looking like “pygmies” which suggests they were of a small but appreciable size. Quite where the trains ran is unclear although a viewer refers to “looking down” which possibly implies they were standing (the norm for a rotunda) and that the trains ran close to the base of the painting (which might otherwise be obscured). On the other hand, other observers only saw the trains as they passed in front of them so they may have been (optionally) seated.

The moving foreground

This was a significant and appreciated feature but quite what it comprised or how it was implemented in a rotunda is unclear. Was the foreground image-specific? Did it convey a sense of motion parallax? Where was it positioned? Was the track (and train) on an arc of foreground with both moving together. After all, there was no sense in trains or track obscuring distant views.

Conclusion

The Padorama was likely an expensive and ground-breaking production. It is possible that Messrs. Marshall considered it as an opportunity to take virtual tourism to a new level as well as automate aspects of its performance. However, it is not clear that the scale and subject matter made it profitable as nothing on this scale was attempted again until the Paris World’s Fair in 1900.

In Part 2 I will describe what is known of the Padorama’s final years in the USA.