Alton Towers has been carrying out an on-going programme of stabilisation and restoration to the House as part of our commitment to our heritage and the value we place upon it.  A large part of the current work revolves around the House Conservatory and in an attempt to show how it would have looked in its heyday we have been working closely with Gary Kelsall and Julian Boulton and their company, to construct a '3D' visualisation of the area.  

Please see www.verus3d.com

Verus3d, have now completed this project for us after many months of painstaking work and through the utilization of the very best technology and expertise.  Choosing a building that is built mainly in glass caused no end of complications for the computer programmes, many of which had to be completely re-written!  The finished product however comprises various 'still' frame images and a whole moving sequence or 'walk-through' that is 2 minutes in length and comprises the sequencing together of 3,000 individual frames!

The project has drawn together a great deal of research and technical expertise to produce a visualisation of the House Conservatory that is both as historically accurate and photo/movie realistic as possible.
 
Please click on the movie on the right hand side to view the moving 3-dimensional visualisation of what the Alton Towers House Conservatory - would have looked like in its heyday from the times of the 16th Earl of Shrewsbury.
 
Visitors to Alton Towers, the ancestral seat of the Shrewsbury family, would have first entered through the Grand Entrance, before walking through first the Armory, then The Picture Gallery and into the Octagon.
 
This 3-dimensional visualization begins as the view those people would have had when first entering the House Conservatory up the steps which lead from the Octagon.   
 
Visitors would have been able to glimpse Her Ladyship’s garden to their right as well as The Star Garden to their left as the length of the House Conservatory – some 115ft in total – would have stretched before them.
 
Their walk would have taken them through sculpted stone arch-ways and over ceramic tiles specially crafted by Thomas Minton and design by Augustus Pugin.
 
Many exotic plants and flowers - arranged in carefully planned and uniform planting schemes - were laid out in beds which flanked the main pathway - and hanging baskets were carefully positioned from chains which hung from the wooden rafters.  The scents of these many species would have filled the conservatory and accompanied the visitor’s walk down towards an octagonal bay whose roof reached some 20ft in height to accommodate the planting of tall tropical palms.
  
At the far end of the Conservatory the visitor would have been met by more exotic plants set into pots on the Conservatory floor.      
  
This is a view which would have been enjoyed by Princess Victoria herself before she became Queen, as she had tea in this Conservatory on her visit to Alton Towers in 1834.
 
This conservatory designed by Thomas Hopper – the plantings – the surrounding smells signs and sounds would have been but part of the journey into Alton Towers, and a precursor to an entrance into the Drawing Room and the main body of the House and the breathtaking splendors which lay within…
 
For more details see www.verus3d.com