In 1750, Durham-born Thomas Wright attempted to make the vast distances involved in the science of astronomy more comprehensible to a popular audience. He took the dome of St Paul’s in London as representing the Sun, and on that scale calculated the relative positions and diameters of the planets of the solar system. Earth he placed at Marylebone.

Continuing his scale model of the solar system, Wright placed Jupiter at Hampton Court and Saturn at Chelmsford. Switching to a much smaller scale, using not the dome of St Paul’s but the little gilt orb atop it, he then attempted to give some idea of the relative position of our nearest star, which he located far away at Rome.

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