Blenheim Palace is to host an extraordinary outdoor sculpture exhibition this summer, featuring five life-size reconstructions of Megalosaurus — the first dinosaur ever to receive a formal scientific name. Running from 10th August to 1st November 2026, Dinosaurs Are Forever is the work of British artist, designer and former BBC presenter Jay Jay Burridge, and marks what he describes as his most ambitious project to date.
The sculptures, each standing nine metres tall, will be positioned along a pathway following the Lower Water Terraces at the Oxfordshire estate, with views across the South Lawn. Admission to the exhibition is included with any standard Blenheim Palace ticket or Annual Pass, making it accessible to the palace’s broad family audience.
Engineering Meets Palaeontology
The creation of the sculptures involved a collaboration between Burridge and palaeontologist Dr Matt Dempsey, who drew on original fossil material as well as comparative data from Megalosaurus‘s closest known relatives to reconstruct the animal’s skeleton. That skeleton was then transformed into a movable structure by specialist fabricators with experience in Formula 1 and aerospace engineering — industries in which precision and material performance are paramount.
Each sculpture features a precision-engineered exoskeleton, custom-designed joints, and a lattice of tendons and arteries constructed from shock cord, which lends the structures both tension and flexibility. The individual bones are hand carved from a dense but ultra-lightweight material, combining scientific rigour with a contemporary sculptural aesthetic.
Megalosaurus holds a unique place in the history of science: it was formally named and described in 1824 by the Oxford geologist William Buckland, making it the first dinosaur to be identified and classified. Fossils were first discovered in the village of Stonesfield in Oxfordshire — a connection that gives the exhibition particular local resonance.
Burridge, who moved to Oxfordshire 17 years ago, established his workshop in that very village before learning of its palaeontological significance.
