What Was The First Passenger Lift In The United Kingdom?

The passenger lift is such a critical and foundational part of the skylines of modern cities that many people take it for granted. The incredible mechanisms and precise engineering feats ensure that a person only has to push a button to reach the floor they want to get to.

Interestingly, the first-ever lift in Great Britain was created largely as an afterthought as part of a grand plan between a painter and an MP who ultimately fled the country.

The painter was Thomas Horner, a surveyor by trade who had by 1820 become a landscape painter of some renown due to his versatility and technical skill.

After years of success in Wales, he moved to London to sell a panorama of London as seen from the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral, but after nobody expressed an interest in his paintings, he came up with the ambitious idea to create the biggest panoramic painting of London ever.

To house it, a building named the London Colosseum but designed to look like the Pantheon was constructed in Regent’s Park by Decimus Burton and funded by banker Rowland Stephenson MP at considerable expense.

This purpose-built building would not only house the painting itself, an ambitious work completed by E.T. Parris after four intense years of work and a painting task so arduous and risky that he fell from his scaffold twice, luckily avoiding any serious injury.

The acre of painting was so gargantuan that the best way to view it was from an elevated viewpoint, which is where the idea for an “ascending room” was invented, that could carry twelve people to a vantage point where they could gaze in wonder at the painting that surrounded them.

Sadly, the largest painting ever made no longer exists, as the sheer expense of the project would turn out to have been funded by Mr Stephenson MP stealing from the bank he worked for before fleeing to the United States, with Mr Hornor following soon after.

It fell into decline and was demolished in 1875, with its only lasting legacy being the birthplace of the lift as we know it today.