Extract from: A
General Guide
to the British Museum 1898
GENERAL
GUIDE
TO THE
BRITISH
MUSEUM
NATURAL HISTORY
(Published 1898)
HISTORICAL
INTRODUCTION
THE British Museum dates its actual
foundation from
the year 1753, when an Act of Parliament was passed "for the purchase
of the Museum or Collection of Sir Hans Sloane, and of the Harleian
Collection of Manuscripts, and for providing One General Repository for
the better Reception and more convenient Use of the said Collections
and of the Cottonian Library and of the Additions thereto."
Sir Hans Sloane, an eminent physician in
London, was
for sixteen years President of the Royal College of Physicians, and in
1727 succeeded Sir Isaac Newton in the Presidential Chair of the Royal
Society. He was throughout his long life a diligent and miscellaneous
collector, having, as stated in the Preamble of the Act of
Incorporation of the Museum, "through the course of many years, with
great labour and expense, gathered together whatever could be procured,
either in our own or foreign countries, that was rare and curious." His
collection, which at the time of his death in 1753 was contained in his
residence, the Manor House, Chelsea, consisted of "books, drawings,
manuscripts, prints, medals and coins, ancient and modern antiquities,
seals, cameos and intaglios, precious stones, agates, jaspers, vessels
of agate and jasper, crystals, mathematical instruments, pictures, and
other things," which latter included numerous zoological and geological
specimens, and an extensive herbarium of dried plants preserved in 310
large folio volumes.
According to the terms of Sir Hans
Sloane's will,
this collection was purchased for the sum or £20,000, far
below
its intrinsic value, in order "that it might be preserved and
maintained, not only for the inspection and entertainment of the
learned and the curious, but for the general use and benefit of the
public to all posterity."
The valuable collection of manuscripts
formed by Sir
Robert Cotton at the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the
seventeenth centuries, was already the property of the nation, having
been presented by his grandson, Sir John Cotton, in the year 1700. The
Harleian Collection was obtained by purchase at the same time as the
Sloanian, and the three were brought together under the designation of
"the British Museum," placed under the care of a body of trustees*, and
lodged in Montagu House, Bloomsbury, purchased for their reception in
1754. The Museum was opened to the public on the 15th of January, 1759.
Admission to the galleries of antiquities and natural history was at
first by ticket only on application in writing, and limited to ten
persons, for each of three hours in the day. Visitors were not allowed
to inspect the cases at their leisure, but were conducted through the
galleries by officers of the house. The hours of admission were
subsequently extended; but it was not until the year 1810 that the
Museum was freely accessible to the general public for three days in
the week, from ten to four o'clock. The present daily opening, with
longer hours in summer, dates only from 1879.
At the time of the foundation of the
Museum, the
site allotted seemed amply sufficient for its purposes; but gradually,
as the Collections of all kinds increased, they outgrew the limits, not
only of the original Montagu House, but even of its successor, the
present classical building, completed in 1845 from the designs of Sir
Robert Smirke. The erection of the magnificent reading-room in 1857
disposed for a time of the difficulty of finding accommodation for the
ever-growing library; but the keepers of other departments continued
urgent in their demands for more space, and after much discussion of
rival plans for keeping the collections together and obtaining the
needful extension of room by acquiring the property immediately around
the old Museum, or for severing the collections and removing a
portion to another building, the latter course was finally decided
upon. At a special general meeting of the trustees, held on the 21st of
January, 1860, attended by many members of the Government in their
official capacity, a resolution, moved by the First Lord of the
Treasury, was carried "That it is expedient that the Natural History
Collection he removed from the British Museum, inasmuch as such an
arrangement would be attended with considerably less expense than would
be incurred by providing a sufficient additional space in immediate
contiguity to the present building of the British Museum."
The House of Commons, in the Session of
1863,
sanctioned the purchase of part of the site of the International
Exhibition of 1862 at South Kensington, with a view to appropriating it
to the purpose of a Museum of Natural History.
In January, 1864, the Commissioners of
Her Majesty's
Works issued an advertisement for designs for a Natural History Museum
and a Patent Museum, to be erected on part of the land thus acquired, a
plan which had been prepared by Mr. Hunt in September, 1862, from
Professor Owen's suggestions, being proposed as a model in respect to
dimensions and internal arrangement.
The plans of the various competitors
were submitted
to Her Majesty's Commissioners of Works, who awarded prizes to three of
the number, giving precedence to that of Captain Francis
Fowke,
R.E., and then referred the three premiated plans to the Trustees of
the British Museum. As the internal arrangements in Captain Fowke's
plan did not meet with the approval of the Museum officers, he was
desired to modify them in conformity with the requirements of the
Trustees. He was engaged in this labour when his death occurred, in
September, 1865.
Early in the year 1866, Mr.
Alfred Waterhouse
was invited by the Chief Commissioner of Works to take up the
unfinished work of Captain Fowkes but he found himself unable to
complete the plan to his own satisfaction, and in February, 1868, he
was commissioned to form a fresh design, embodying the requirements of
the officers of the Natural History Departments of the Museum.
Mr. Waterhouse was not long in
submitting to the
Trustees his plan and model of the building, with a disposition of
galleries as required, and these were formally accepted by the Trustees
in April, 1868. It was not, however, until February, 1871, that the
working plans had been thoroughly considered, and received the final
approval of the Trustees.
The actual work of erection was commenced in the year 1873, and the
building was handed over to the Trustees of the British Museum by Her
Majesty's Commissioner of Works in the month of June, 1880. Immediately
that the exhibition cases were completed, and the galleries were
sufficiently dry to receive the collections, the great labour of
removing the Natural History Collection from Bloomsbury was commenced.
The departments of Geology, Mineralogy and Botany, were arranged in
their respective sections of the Museum in the course of the year 1880,
and the portion of the Museum which contained these departments was
first opened to the public on April 18th, 1881. It was not until the
following year that the cases destined to receive the larger
collections of the Zoological Department were sufficiently complete to
allow of these collections following, and three more years were
required before all the rooms could be brought into a state fitted for
public inspection. The last that was opened was the gallery devoted to
British Zoology, in May, 1886.
* The Trustees under the Act of Incorporation were the Archbishop
of Canterbury, the Lord Chancellor, the Speaker of the House of
Commons, the Bishop of London, and the principal Officers of State for
the time being; six representatives of Founders' families; the
Presidents of the Royal Society and College of Physicians; and
fifteen other Trustees to be elected by them. Subsequently, the
Presidents of the Society of Antiquaries and of the Royal Academy
of Arts, a Trustee by special nomination of the Sovereign,. and three
more family Trustees were added to the Board.
DESCRIPTION
OF THE BUILDING
The following description of the
structure has been contributed by Mr. Waterhouse:-
"The New Natural History Museum will,
from its
position, always be more or less identified with the International
Exhibition of 1862, which occupied the whole of the site between the
Horticultural Gardens and Cromwell Road. It was at one time thought
that a portion, at any rate, of the Exhibition buildings could with
advantage have been converted into a Museum of Natural History.
Parliament, however decided against the preservation of any part of
these buildings, and they were accordingly entirely removed.
"In designing the present building,
Captain Fowke's
original idea of employing terra-cotta was always kept in view, though
the blocks were reduced in size, so as to obviate, as far as possible,
the objection to the employment of this material, arising from its
liability to twist in burning. For this and other reasons the architect
abandoned the idea of a Renaissance building, and fell back on the
earlier Romanesque style which prevailed largely in Lombardy and the
Rhineland from the tenth to the end of the twelfth century.
"In 1873, a contract was entered into by
the
Government with Messrs. George Baker and Sons, of Lambeth, for the
erection of the building at a cost of £352,000. Other
subsequent
contracts have been entered into by the Treasury, especially one for
the erection of the towers, which in the first instance it was decided
to omit.
"On looking at the exterior of the
building, one of
the first points which strikes a spectator is that the site is lower
than the street. This arises from the fact that the whole surface of
the ground between the three roads was excavated for the Exhibition
building of 1862, and it was not thought desirable, for economical
considerations, to refill the space. The building is set back 100 feet
from the Cromwell Road, and is approached by two inclined planes,
curved on plan and supported by arches, forming carriage-ways. Between
the two are broad flights of Craigleith stone steps, for the use of
those approaching the building on foot. The extreme length of the front
is 675 feet, and the height of the towers is 192 feet. The return
fronts, east and west, beyond the end pavilions, have not yet been
erected.
"On entering the main portal, the
visitor has before
him the great central apartment of the Museum (170 feet long, by 97
feet wide, and 72 feet high), which it is intended to use as an Index
or Typical Museum. The double arch in the immediate foreground which
spans the nave (57 feet wide), carries the staircase from the first to
the second floor. Opposite the spectator, at the end of the hall, is
the first flight of the staircase. 20 feet wide, which rises from the
ground to the first floor. The galleries over the side recesses form
the connection between the two staircases, and are also intended for
exhibition space, as are also the floor of the main hall and the side
recesses under the galleries. The arches under the side flights of the
main staircase at the end of the hall lead into another large
apartment, cruciform on plan, intended for the exhibition of specimens
of British Natural History, with an extreme length of 97 by 77 feet
measured into the arms of the cross.
"Branching out of the Central Hall, near
its
southern extremity, are two long galleries, each 278 feet 6 in. long by
50 feet wide. These galleries are repeated on the first floor, and in a
modified form on the second floor. They are divided into bays by
coupled piers arranged in two rows down the length of the galleries,
and planned in such a manner as to allow of upright cases being placed
back to back between the piers and the outer walls, so as to get the
best possible light upon the objects displayed in the cases with the
least amount of reflection from the glass, and leaving the central
space free as a passage. Owing to the nature of the specimens exhibited
in one or two of these galleries, requiring for their exhibition rather
table-cases than wall-cases, advantage has only been taken to a limited
extent of this disposition of the plan. These terra-cotta piers,
however, are constructively necessary, not only to conceal the iron
supports for the floor above, but to prevent these supports being
affected in case of fire. Behind these galleries on the ground floor
are a series of toplighted galleries, devoted, on the east side to
Geology and Palaeontology, and on the west to Zoology.
"The towers on the north of the building
have each a
central smoke-shaft from the heating apparatus, the boilers of which
are placed in the basement, immediately between the towers, while the
space surrounding the smoke-shafts is used for drawing off the vitiated
air from the various galleries contiguous thereto. The front galleries
are ventilated into the front towers, which form the crowning feature
of the main front. These towers also contain, above the second floor,
various rooms for the work of the different departments, and on the
topmost storey large cisterns for the purpose of always having at hand
a considerable storage of water in case of fire. On the western side of
the building, where it is intended that the Zoological collection shall
be placed, the ornamentation of the terra-cotta (which will be found
very varied both within and without the building) has been based
exclusively on living organisms. On the east side, where Geology and
Palaeontology find a home, the terra-cotta ornamentation has been
derived from extinct specimens.
"The Museum is the largest, if not,
indeed; the
only, modem building in which terra-cotta has been exclusively used for
external façades and interior wall-surfaces, including all
the
varied decoration which this involves."
The space covered by the building
itself, including
the detached portion behind, which contains the collections of animals
preserved in spirit, is nearly four acres.
The whole ground on which the Museum
stands,
including the gardens which surround it on the south, east and west
sides, is 12 acres and 635 yards. The gardens are open to the public
whenever the Museum itself is open, under certain regulations which are
posted at the entrance gates.
* In judging the appearance of the exterior of
the
building, it should
be remembered that these fronts are required to complete the design, as
the externally unsightly brick galleries which run back from the main
front, and are now conspicuous when the Museum is seen from either west
or east, are intended to be concealed by them. (Above: The
Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, from the south-west, showing
part of the west front, not yet completed.)
From: A General Guide
to the British Museum (Natural History) Cromwell Road, London, S.W.
with Plans and Views of the Building. Printed by Order of
the Trustees, 1898. Pages 7-15
Cover
Central Hall