🗼 Watkin's Tower or the Great Tower of London
An unbuilt Victorian rival to the Eiffel Tower
📋 Fast Facts
- Planned height: 358 metres (1,200 feet), intended to surpass the Eiffel Tower by 46 metres
- Location: Wembley Park, London
- Design cost in 1890: £352,222; structural weight designed at 14,659 tons
- Construction: 1892–1895 (reached 47 metres); demolished 1904–1907
Watkin's Tower was a Victorian-era vision conceived by railway entrepreneur Sir Edward Watkin as a monumental steel structure to rival and surpass the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Designed by architects Stewart, MacLaren, and Dunn, it was intended as the centrepiece of a vast pleasure park served by Watkin's Metropolitan Railway. Though construction reached only 47 metres before ceasing, the incomplete tower became one of London's most famous unbuilt landmarks, symbolising both the era's engineering ...