TWELVE ACRES OF MAGIC

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 104, 4 May 1935, Page 35

TWELVE ACRES OF MAGIC

Fragments of far-off mountains, old wind-moulded trees/new machines, and the youngest of ideas are being welded, in a wonderful realm of magic at Kensington, into the first of the great events that are to celebrate this most notable year of the King's reign—the Jubilee year. Throughout the 12 acres of Olympia 100 craftsmen are at work in a joyous babel of sound, moulding the most stubborn of earth's many products to the service of man's truest joy ... Home.

Huge timber frames sailing upwards to find their setting against high walls will hold sections of the world's greatest mural painting. Steel girders rise to make a grand staircase up to broad piers and galleries from which vistas of light and stirring colour will later be seen. Recently, writes a "Daily Mail" reP,°, r 'J wandered bemused among it a"• There were planks and pipes, platforms of timber, and pillars in a puzzling complexity that only genius it seemed, might solve.

Somehow they were to grow into pavilions and schools wherein all manner of alluring aspects of the science of homekeeping will be' taught to eager learners.

Clinics you might call them—for the cure of kitchen-weakness, dining-room deficiency, and the under-nourishment of the comfort-system!

Away in a western wing the walls had vanished and their place was taken by miles of smiling countryside mist-wrapped mountains, warm old gardens with thick hedges and the sparkle of summer suns on blue waters. It was no longer London. You saw through the city's sombre solidity, the almond blossom and azaleas aflower in Japan, the jewelled blue of Italian lakes, the sunbeams meeting round Alpine chalets.

For here, while England shivered in a keen north-eastern breeze, the Gardens of All Nations were meeting in their summer opulence.

Rugged masses of. Snowdon were unloading for the Welsh Garden. Among them was one, which alone weighed just over two tons, brought to London with its lichen-coated surface undamaged.

Near them were three fantastic oak trees twisted to a weird beauty in their effort to escape the bitter winds. Their owner said that they were at least 30

years old.

For the Scottish garden they were unloading. 16 tons of weathered sandstone and thousands of hand-made bricks from a demolished Tudor house.

Close by lay a moss-painted millstone, nearly 4ft across, which had been found with a number of other old grindstones in a quarry.

Together with a milestone that never had any directions carved on it they are to be built into ornaments and steps. •

Most of London's newest theatre in which the School for Fashion is to be held, with a happy audience of 800 pupils every session, is already near completion.

Soon sufficient of the stage will be ready for the application of the decoration that will complete the artistry designed for it.

Down in Jubilee Village^-the most marvellous hamlet in all Britain—the houses begun ten days before were already being capped. .

Up on the second floor of the Empire Hall, where youth is especially to be enthralled by an exposition of the progress of science and engineering in the past 25 years, there were already white enamelled .complexities of gears and cranks to give promise of the fascination of wheels awakening to whirling life and industry.

Painted caravans stood in a sutnmet lane! Ideal Homes for the freedom of the long white road? No—they are to be the setting for the colourful hours in which Alfredo and his Gipsy Orchestra are to minister free of charge to 1000 exhibition guests at a time.

Then there were halls within hallsairy places of pleasantly curving porticos and apartments. Here, most of all, modern learning will seek to provide an antidote to women's overwork.

In the entrance hall there will be an information bureau, to the right the portico o£ the University of Cookery, and to the left will be the range of kitchens more perfect than can be dreamed of by any woman—save only Uicir creator.