A Hereford creation that stunned the world at the Festival of Britain more than 50 years ago could re-appear on the London skyline as a companion on the South Bank to the crowd-pulling 'Eye'.

And the city company that built the 290ft high cigar-shaped Skylon as a post-war morale booster says it would welcome the chance to re-create its architectural blockbuster by the River Thames.

The original Skylon, put up in the last year of the post-war Labour government and a huge crowd-puller for the 1951 Festival of Britain, was built by Hereford steel fabrication firm Painter Brothers.

Half a century on Painter Bros director and general manager David Goldsmith is confident the company could build a Skylon for the 21st century.

"We have to be interested. We certainly have the ability," he says.

Skylon 2004 is the brainchild of Professor Phillip King, president of the Royal Academy. It started as a salute to acclaimed architect the late Sir Philip Powell, who jointly designed the festival Skylon.

As envisaged, the all-new Skylon would rise again near the Royal Festival Hall, upriver from the London Eye, just yards from where it once stood as the festival centrepiece.

Prof King said though the odds seemed long at this stage, he was convinced the idea could gain wider support.

"There is more backing for this than people think," he said.

He estimates Skylon 2 would cost around £800,000 - a sum that could be raised privately.

The academy's architectural committee asked academician Ian Ritchie, one of the country's leading architects, to investigate the audacious idea.

Mr Ritchie, who recently designed the 120-metre high Spire of Dublin, has submitted a design to the South Bank Centre which runs the cultural complex on the festival site.

The Royal Academy is planning to feature the story of Skylon at its summer exhibition.

Reaction to the original Skylon - the tallest modern construction of its day - was mixed. While its functional lines proved too much for some, others eulogised the piece and believed it should have stayed up as an inspiration.

It was intended to symbolise the spirit of a Britain anxious to turn its back on wartime austerity and embrace a new age of plenty. It inspired milliners to create outrageous hats and Biro to produce a pen that, once on its stand, became a scale model of the giant novelty.

When the festival site was illuminated, Skylon - balanced on a single ball bearing and supported by wires - seemed miraculously to hover in mid-air.

But it was scrapped soon after the festival ended, some claiming that it was poleaxed on the direct orders of Sir Winston Churchill on his return as Prime Minister. Where the parts ended up is a subject for speculation, some were even said to have been sold as ashtrays.

One small section came to light after research by the BBC's One Foot in the Past in the 1990s.