Responses from emails

I initially sent emails to London Metropolitan Archive and the Imperial War Museum in the search for more information, it took a while for the responses to come through i shall start with IWM's response.

In some of my information i managed to scrape off of the Internet it was said that the globe was used as a map during the Crimean war so therefore i sent an email to IWM their response was;

I am afraid that the Crimean War is before the period we cover...

They also referred me to some other places i could look.

In this case it may be worth contacting either the Victoria and Albert Museum (V & A) or the British Museum...

Next onto the response from the LMA which took a little longer to get but it was worth it;

Wyld's Globe (also known as Wyld's Great Globe or Wyld's Monster Globe) was situated in Leicester Square, in London between 1851 and 1862. It was designed by H.R Abraham on the idea of James Wyld (1812-1887), a distinguished geographer and Member of Parliament. The Globe was built at the time of the Great Exhibition. Inside a purpose-built building was a giant globe, 60 feet (18 m) 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 continents and seas, complete with modelled mountain ridges and rivers all to scale. The periodical 'Punch' described the experience as "a geographical globule which the mind can take in at one swallow." After the 10-year lease had expired, it was removed in 1862, and the central garden of Leicester Square was redesigned.

We have identified the following items here at London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) that may be of interest to your research:

- MBO/PLANS/007, 008, 009 Westminster. Plan of great globe in Leicester Square, 3rd February 1851
- MBO/PLANS/626 Westminster. Erection of building in Leicester Square, 1845-1853?
- SC/PZ/WE/1/2236, 2237, 2238, 2268, 2269 Prints showing exterior of Wyld's Great Globe
- SC/PZ/WE/01/2223 Print showing construction of "Mr Wyld's large model of the Earth"
- SC/PZ/WE/01/2234 Print showing sectional view of "Mr Wyld's model of the Earth"

Some of the prints referred to above will be extracted from periodicals such as 'Illustrated London News' and 'The Builder', so it may be worth checking those sources in case there are further images.

great the information is definitely worth going to London to check out.

more research

i found a little more information about the globe

"The creator ... James Wyld Jr. (1812-87), was trained for a military career but at age eighteen (around 1830) became involved in his father's cartographic firm. It was during the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London that the younger Wyld became a household name. He had leased a part of Leicester Square and constructed his "Great Globe" or "Model of the Earth," the largest globe made to that date, measuring almost 19 metres in height and approximately 12 metres in diameter. The interior, which delineated the physical features of the Earth, could be viewed by the public using stairways and galleries. Visitors were also able to view an exhibition of various products of the Wyld firm, terrestrial and celestial globes of various sizes included."

Dahl, Edward H.. Sphaerae Mundi : Early Globes at the Stewart Museum.
Montreal, QC, Canada: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2000. p 102-103.

i'm not quite sure whether the mesurements mean the actuall globe is deformed meaning it will be slightly stretched vertically. Also i found out that the space th people were waiting to queue in was also a gallery for other globes Wyld's firm created.

Edit: i found another snippet of information in the form of a rant in an issue of a Manchester newspaper from a reader complaining about the inaccuracy of a previous comment.

Start with what I have

Even though the limited amount of information I have managed to obtain is holding back the project a little it is by no means holding me back as while I am still waiting for replies I have started to model it with what I do have to work from and if I do get any information I can make any changes appropriate to what I have modelled up to that point and work from there.

Results of day 1 of modeling:


I thought I could get a rough outline of the main body of the building and work from that, during creation I realised that the main body consists of 28 duplicate sides so after I get the main shape right I can just work on 1 side with the detail and duplicate that back round.