THE HAND OF DECIMUS
Mr. Francis Thompson, the librarian at Chatsworth, has discovered that the great conservatory there was designed by Decimus Burton, down to the minutest detail, for the signed drawings exist. They are not by Paxton as has been supposed. The idea was Paxton's, but a letter which Mr. Thompson has published in a local paper, from Burton to the Duke of Devonshire, written in 1843, mentions that Burton was the architect and that Paxton fully acknowledged this. Decimus Burton designed the Colosseum in Regent's Park, which had a bigger dome than St. Paul's, the Athemeum Club, the screen at Hyde Park Corner, and laid out much of Tunbridge Wells, Fleetwood and Bournemouth. It seems to me, from this news about the conservatory, that Decimus Burton may also have had a considerable hand in the Ctystal Palace. Burton died in 1881, aged eighty-one, and I knew an architect, E. J. May, who was articled to him. Mr. May told me of Burton's con- tempt for the red-brick houses in what was then called 'The Queen Anne style' being built in Fitzjohn's Avenue, Hamp- stead, by Norman Shaw. 'There, May,' said Burton, with scorn in his voice as they drove by in an open carriage, 'there's your "Queen Anne" for you.'
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