Henry Phillips was a brilliant botanist whose skills had a lasting impact on Brighton and Hove. But sadly he is remembered more for one towering failure than for his undoubted successes.

Born in Henfield in 1773, Philips became renowned in middle age for his expertise in horticulture. In Brighton alone, he laid out The Level and the Kemp Town Enclosures creating beautiful gardens much admired at the time.

Then he planned the Athenaeum project in Oriental Place near the Hove border in 1825. It would have been a huge dome big enough to house full grown trees.

Designed in extravagant Oriental style with echoes of the Royal Pavilion, it would also have contained gardens and a library. But money ran out before work could start in earnest. Only housing to the south of the sire was completed and this now forms Oriental Place.

Undeterred, Phillips pressed ahead with an even more grandiose scheme in Hove, confusingly called the Anthaeum from the Greek for flower, to house a wonderful garden.

Phillips planned the biggest dome in the world dwarfing those of St Pail’s in London and St Peter’s in Rome. It was to be 164 feet in diameter and over 69 feet high.

He hired Henry English, proprietor of a London foundry, to build the huge iron supports and Amon Henry Wilds, Brighton’s best known architect, to undertake the design.

Work began in 1832 and attracted big crowds as horses brought in the ironwork by waggon. And excitement grew as e project neared completion.

But tensions were soon apparent on the site mainly because English insisted on being in charge of the building work.

The main argument was over a huge central pillar. English insisted that it was not needed as the ribs of the dome would offer support to the structure.

But Wilds was so concerned that he resigned from the project and Philips called in the most eminent engineer of the day, Sir John Rennie, to see the structure for himself.

Only a year after work had started the dome was ready for opening in the summer of 1833. But Phillips was horrified to find that without his knowledge the central pillar had been removed on the instructions of English.

Shortly before the official opening, two workmen were about to go home when they heard a terrible cracking noise above them.

Running for their lives away from the structure, they reached safety just before the whole edifice came crashing to the ground.

There were bright lights like a fireworks display as the iron ribs struck each other on collapsing...

Phillips was called to the site and gave instructions that no one should enter the site which was wise as some ribs continued to fall.

But his dream, like the building itself, was shattered. Had the central pillar remained, the structure might still be in Hove today.

Philips went blind through shock and died in 1840 after seven years of sorrow. The tangled remains of the Anthaeum remained untouched for 20 years until Palmeira Square was built on the site.

Rennie never made it to Hove but Joseph Paxton went there in 1850 shortly before the ruins were covered. The next year he built his amazing Crustal Palace in London to house the Great Exhibition.

All Hove was left with was a wreck.