CHAPTER XIX - Science Museum
The building of the Science Museum was
begun in 1914 under the auspices of the
Board of Education, on a plan that in
1974 was not yet completed. Previous to 1909
the science collections had been part of the South
Kensington Museum, and until the constitution
of the Board of Education in 1900 had been under
the authority of the Science and Art Department.
Before the collections were removed into the new
building, from the 1920's onwards, they had
never had a home specifically designed for them,
and between the 1860's and 1880's had been
accumulated piecemeal in various improvised
galleries west of Exhibition Road. Some elements
in the collections had been removed thither from
their original locations on the main site of the
South Kensington Museum east of Exhibition
Road (for which see plan-sheet A in the end
pocket), whence they were gradually expelled to
make room for the expansion of the art division
of the museum, whose growth and popularity
contrasted strongly with the fortunes of the nonart
collections.
Both parts of the South Kensington Museum,
however, had a common origin, in the early
Victorian aspiration to bring applied art and
science to bear on productive industry. The
Science and Art Department and the 1851
Exhibition Commissioners were alike in wishing
to see established in London collections illustrative
both of applied art and applied science, and linked
to teaching institutions. Some collections then
being formed contained the germs of a 'science'
museum. The Society of Arts was partly responsible,
often utilizing objects made available
from the Great Exhibition, and a 'trade' collection,
a 'food' collection, an 'animal products'
collection and a (partly scientific) 'educational'
collection were thus established. By 1858 they
had been made over to the Department at South
Kensington, which in 1856 had itself commenced
a 'museum of construction', illustrating building
materials and techniques. At the same period the
Commissioners of Patented Inventions, constituted
in 1852, were acquiring a semi-official
collection of models and machinery (largely the
property of their Superintendent of Specifications,
Bennet Woodcroft) in Southampton Buildings.
By 1857 this also, while remaining under the
Patent Commissioners' administration, had been
transferred to South Kensington. It was there
augmented by the 1851 Commissioners' own
collection derived from the Great Exhibition,
which was described by Disraeli in 1852 as 'the
foundation of an extraordinary museum of industry',
and valued at £9,000. (ref. 1)
The assemblage of these miscellaneous collections
in one place had been effected largely by the
influence of Prince Albert to form constituent
parts of a coherent whole that his supporters
thought of as an 'industrial university'. The
'museum' part of this complex was to illustrate
the progression from raw materials through the
operations of applied science and art to the finished
product. (ref. 2) Plans drawn up by the Prince, by Henry
Cole and Richard Redgrave, and others, show
that in 1853–4 spacious museum buildings for art
and science alike had been envisaged on the main
'quadrangle' of the estate, supplemented, in the
Cole-Redgrave plan, by a 'museum of patented
inventions' and a 'testing ground for experiments'
where the Victoria and Albert Museum stands
(see pages 81–5). (ref. 3) There was evidently some
demand from the manufacturing towns for such
an establishment, (ref. 4) and there was also a lively
awareness on the part of the Prince's sympathizers
of foreign institutions with a comparable
aim. (ref. 5) So far as a 'science museum' was concerned,
the example of the museum of the Conservatoire
des Arts et Metiers was much in mind. A distinguished
body of British Jurors at the Paris
Exhibition of 1855 called for a similar museum in
London, noting the latter's inferiority to Paris in
'public museums of the objects of nature'. (ref. 4)
In fact, the difficulties attending the attraction
of other institutions (particularly the National
Gallery and the 'learned societies') to the main
quadrangle caused the erection of a 'temporary'
iron museum on the eastern extension, and it was
this shed that the collections mentioned above
shared as their home with the 'museum of
ornamental art' and some other collections when
the South Kensington Museum was opened in
1857.
The non-art collections taken together were a
far more imperfect approximation to a true
science museum than were the art collections to a
modern museum of fine and applied art. Some
limitations were the accident of history and have
continued to condition the proportions of the
present Science Museum: the biological, botanical
and geological sciences were illustrated in collections
elsewhere (at the British Museum, Kew and
the home of the Museum of Practical Geology in
Jermyn Street) and, whether by the strength of
their own traditions, the current esteem for their
subject matter or the obstinacy of their officers,
resisted any absorption into a general museum of
science run by the Department. But even in
respect of the physical, chemical and mechanical
sciences there was only a limited conception of a
museum setting forth visibly the results of man's
investigation of the material universe. The
practical and industrial emphasis meant that the
raw materials and machinery of manufacture and
the means of transportation were the chief objects
of interest, with a subsidiary interest in fairly
simple educational appliances. The history of
invention was, however, represented in some
well-known monuments of the industrial age,
such as Arkwright's spinning jenny, the locomotive
'Puffing Billy', and 'the locomotive that
killed Mr. Huskisson'. ('It is the patriarch of
passenger locomotives', the museum's director,
Henry Cole, told a Select Committee on the
Patent Office in 1864, 'the first of its kind, and a
first of its kind is difficult to get at anywhere'.) (ref. 6)
In the following period up to the early 1870's
the art collections flourished at the expense of the
non-art collections. By 1865 the 'animal products'
collection was moved to the former refreshment
rooms of the 1862 Exhibition (later the Southern
Gallery), that is, west of Exhibition Road, where
the museum of construction was housed in the
western arcades of the Royal Horticultural
Society's garden by the following year: the former
collection, together with the 'food' collection,
was removed to the Bethnal Green Museum in
1872.' The 'education' collection remained east
of Exhibition Road but was moved from one
temporary home to another. The Department
did not neglect to add to these collections from
time to time, and would have found a place for
them in the abortive schemes for comprehensive
rebuilding that it produced between 1860 and
1874. But it was on a museum of machinery or
inventions that ambitions for a true science
museum chiefly centred, perhaps taking as its
nucleus the 'patent museum'—a collection not
limited to models illustrating patent specifications.
The Patent Commissioners themselves, viewing
their collection as 'the foundation of a great
national museum', had called on the Government
in 1858 to establish at South Kensington 'a
permanent and spacious building for the Patent
Office Museum' with room for expansion. (ref. 8) Cole
was an enthusiast for a very large, comprehensive,
international 'museum of scientific inventions',
not less extensive than that of the Conservatoire,
which he and Fowke reported on as a model in
1865 (and which already possessed a site of more
than five acres). (ref. 9) Given the expansion of the art
collections, a site west of Exhibition Road seemed
indicated. An enlarged 'Patent Museum' was one
of the suggested occupants of the disused 1862
Exhibition building in 1863, (ref. 10) and when that
building was demolished a 'Patent Museum' was
one of the two definite uses of the site which the
Government specified in the architectural competition
for a museum complex there early in
1864. (ref. 11) This was supplied in the design of the
successful candidate, Francis Fowke (fig. 31 on
page 204). That summer a Select Committee of
the House of Commons (after calling before it a
number of very eminent engineers but few
scientists) reported on the future of the Patent
Office, Library and Museum. Noting the wide
variety of opinions on the purpose of 'a Museum
connected with the mechanical arts' (that it
should be historical, generally educational, directly
instructional for students and inventors, and so on)
its conclusion was that, with the patent-specification
objects removed elsewhere, its purpose should
be 'to illustrate and explain the commencement,
progress, and present positions of the most
important branches of mechanical invention; to
show the chief steps by which the most remarkable
machines have reached their present degree of
excellence; to convey interesting and useful information,
and to stimulate invention'. (ref. 12) This
generous aim came to nothing. Fowke died, there
was a change of Government, and by 1867 It was
only the other use of the site—for a natural
history museum—that the Government was
prepared to finance. (ref. 13) In 1869 there was a
possibility that that museum might go elsewhere
and Cole wanted the site used for a 'Conservatoire
des Arts et Metiers'. (ref. 14) But in 1870 the whole area
in question (some twelve acres) was finally
dedicated to natural history.
Meanwhile the reality of the 'Patent Museum'
was that it remained in the iron museum but,
because of a disagreement between Cole and
Woodcroft about the terms of admission,
separately entered through an annexe. There it
stayed until c. 1886.
From the 1870's onwards another, powerfully
sponsored, movement towards a respectable
science collection developed: it was no more successful
in animating the Government than previous
efforts, but somewhat changed the emphasis and
expanded the scope of the proposed museum. It
sprang from the increasing concern of eminent
(but not, perhaps, very numerous) persons at the
country's deficiencies in technical and scientific
instruction. Its proponents related a 'science
museum' closely to the requirements of scientific
education, but at a higher level than in the 1850's.
In seeking to meet the needs of teachers for access
to exemplary and reference collections of apparatus
it broadened the scope of such a museum from
materials and industrial machinery to the instruments
of scientific demonstration, experiment and
research.
In 1870 a Royal Commission under the Duke
of Devonshire was set up by Gladstone's Government
to enquire into the state of 'scientific
instruction and the advancement of science':
members included Sir John Lubbock, Sir James
Kay-Shuttleworth, Bernhard Samuelson and
T. H. Huxley. Its Fourth Report, dealing with
the nation's scientific collections, was published in
January 1874. By then, manifestations of
'science' at South Kensington were becoming a
little more palpable and coherent: the great
natural history museum was beginning to rise
fronting Cromwell Road; scientific invention
had found a place in a recent sequence of exhibitions
in the 1851 Commissioners' new galleries,
and in Exhibition Road an imposing block of
laboratories and classrooms was newly occupied
by the central Science Schools of the Department,
where Huxley was professor of biology. In their
report the Royal Commissioners found that the
Department's scientific collections now included,
in addition to those already mentioned, naval
models, economic entomology and forestry, and
fish culture. (ref. 15)
(fn. a) Regretting that 'there is at present
no National Collection of the Instruments used in
the Investigation of Mechanical, Chemical or
Physical Laws' they recommended that 'the
National Collections should be extended in this
direction': they stressed such a collection's utility
for science teachers who wished to inspect
apparatus and also (with emphasis) its value in
improving the skill of scientific-instrument
makers. They regarded a 'Museum of Mechanical
Inventions' as less relevant to their own enquiry
but 'called attention' to the 1864 recommendation
and suggested that the new collection that they
wished to see created, the Department's collections
('subjected to a critical revision') and the 'Patent
Museum' might be united under a minister of
state. (ref. 17) In the next month (February 1874) the
Conservatives returned to office under Disraeli.
No action was taken on the recommendation.
The secretary of the Department was now a
close friend of Huxley's, Colonel J. F. D.
Donnelly, R.E., who in the next quarter of a
century strongly developed its work for scientific
and technical education. To stimulate governmental
action, the Department sponsored an
important loan exhibition of scientific instruments
in the Commissioners' Western and Southern
Galleries in the summer of 1876, associated with
public lectures. In July an impressive memorial
by a numerous and distinguished body of scientists,
urging the establishment of 'a museum of pure
and applied science' in terms similar to those used
by the Royal Commission, was submitted to the
Department's political head, the Duke of Richmond. (ref. 18)
Simultaneously the 1851 Commissioners
made a significant move. The chairman of their
Board of Management, Lord Spencer, was a
believer in the cause of the science museum, and
the Commissioners now offered to sell to the
Government a large site for such a museum (to
include also a library and laboratories). They
themselves would contribute £100,000 to the cost
of building it. The site, at first along the west side
of Exhibition Road, was soon changed to one
running between that road and Queen's Gate,
about on the future line of the Imperial Institute. (ref. 19)
The scientists' memorial and the Commissioners'
offer were both recommended to the Treasury by
the Department, (ref. 20) and an attempt, partially
successful, to preserve the loan collection was
made by the Duke of Devonshire and others: (ref. 21)
contributors to the fund included Cole, Donnelly,
Huxley and Norman Lockyer, all of them connected
with the Department. Friends of the
Department urged that the desired museum should
be created under its auspices. (ref. 22) In 1878 the 1851
Commissioners renewed their offer, together with
a suggestion to make over to the Government the
Eastern and Western Galleries and arcades and
their interest in the Albert Hall. With the
Horticultural Society's garden at its centre, 'the
finest quadrangle in the metropolis' would be at
the service of technical education. (ref. 23) Disraeli's
Government, however, was becoming involved in
war in southern Africa and Afghanistan and by
the beginning of 1879 had evidently decided
against this domestic commitment. (ref. 24) In March
1879 the Treasury told the Commissioners that
their offer was unacceptable, and the Department
that the development of the science branch of the
South Kensington Museum must be left to its
'normal growth'. (ref. 25)
In the following year Gladstone returned to
office but for the science collections it was unfortunate
that his First Commissioner of Works
in 1880–4 and 1892–4, G. J. Shaw-Lefevre,
was unsympathetic to the Department, as was the
Permanent Secretary 1874–86, A. B. Mitford,
and did nothing to lessen the doubts about South
Kensington's methods and personnel felt in the
Treasury. The Department's political head, the
President of the Council, was, however, now Lord
Spencer, and he and the Vice-President, A. J.
Mundella, fought for the science collections; the
museum of the Conservatoire was still a reproach;
and Lord Spencer was clear that resources had
been spent disproportionately on the art collections. (ref. 26)
In 1881 the Science Schools in Exhibition
Road were reconstituted in a nearer approximation
to a general college of science, under Huxley
as Dean, and its council of professors was given an
advisory oversight of the collections. (ref. 27) These
were now increasingly viewed as auxiliary to
advanced science teaching. All the collections,
apart from the 'patent museum' and the 'education
library', were now west of Exhibition Road, and
the patent museum followed after it was made
over to the Department by an Act of Parliament
of 1883 (Plate 57a, c, d). (ref. 28) The Department felt
obliged to turn a deaf ear to Treasury protests at
its continued occupation of the Commissioners'
Western Gallery until a regular lease was concluded
in that year, (ref. 29) and Lord Spencer and
Mundella vehemently rejected as 'a fatal mistake'
the Treasury's suggestion that the collections
should be reduced and the objects retained from
the 1876 loan exhibition dispersed: 'the mischief
will not be remediable . . . if, while a Royal
Commission [under Bernhard Samuelson] . . . is
travelling over Europe to report on the question
of technical instruction, [the Government] break
up the nucleus of, instead of forming, a collection . . .
at the very foundation of scientific
education and progress'. (ref. 30) The Department's
science professors had reported that little 'weeding'
of the collections was possible. A small
interdepartmental committee under Sir Frederick
Bramwell was set up, representing the Department,
the Treasury and the Office of Works, to
report on the scope of the collections and make
recommendations for rehousing them north of the
Natural History Museum. (ref. 31) Donnelly, for the
Department, found the Treasury and Works
representatives very trying, and told Huxley that
their 'simple ignorant cussedness . . . cannot be
imagined—much less described'. He suspected
that 'the enemy are going to kill us with kindness'
by assessing the building requirements at an
alarming level. (ref. 32) The report, in 1885, stated that
the primary purpose of the collections was 'to
provide apparatus and specimens for the instruction
given in the Normal School of Science, and
for the teaching of science generally throughout
the United Kingdom'. Noting that the only access
to the collections from Exhibition Road was along
'an unsightly wooden passage' the committee
found that 'new buildings are absolutely required'
and had had the Office of Works' surveyor prepare
plans for a long building with three-storeyed
blocks presenting 'ornamental elevations' to
Exhibition Road and Queen's Gate: executed
piecemeal it would finally have covered four
and a half acres. Mitford (later Lord Redesdale,
and neither simple nor ignorant) submitted
a dissenting report. The favourable judgment
of the professors on the collections was of little
weight ('prophets who have been invited to
bless are seldom so uncivil as to curse'); the
collections, chiefly the diversion of the idle, were
of small practical utility ('it is not by wandering
through endless galleries . . . that a man will learn
the builder's trade') and should, except the patent
museum, be rehoused with the art collections east
of Exhibition Road: in fact, 'the gradual encroachments
of the Science and Art Department
have been a misfortune'. (ref. 33) Huxley and his
colleagues published a rejoinder, (ref. 34) but early in
1887 the Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer,
observing that the committee was 'not
unanimous', declined to provide the £220,000 or
so estimated necessary for the work. (ref. 35) In the next
few years the old 'educational' and 'construction'
collections and some loan objects were dispersed. (ref. 36)
Huxley's sombre prophecies of industrial warfare
with Britain's rivals were, however, being
heeded, and under this influence The Times published
in July 1887 a strong article on the value
for the nation's educational rearmament of its
mechanical, physical and chemical collections
(rather than its older biological or botanical
collections). Mitford's doubts were dismissed: it
was imperative that a science museum removed
from the present 'filthy, repulsive, unwholesome
sheds' should be reorganized to inform the
scientific instructor, for instance, of 'the best
experiments or observations on which to base his
teaching'. (ref. 37) The 1851 Commissioners, largely
under the guidance of their Honorary Secretary,
the scientist-statesman Sir Lyon Playfair, also
renewed their efforts. They could no longer
themselves build the museum but in July 1888
offered to the Government a four-and-a-half-acre
site on the south side of the new Imperial
Institute Road for £70,000, or little more than a
third of its estimated value, (ref. 38) plus the freehold of
the central part of the Southern Gallery (the
old 1862 refreshment rooms). Early in 1889 the
Treasury, accepting the 1885 definition of the
collections' purpose, asked a small and distinguished
committee of scientists to report if
their bulk could be reduced. Again the committee
found little scope for reduction. The collections
were in two broad divisions. That of instruments
and appliances (largely built up subsequent to the
1874 report and partly derived from the 1876
exhibition) was, as Huxley testified in evidence,
very extensively used for teaching: so also, though
less extensively, was the other older collection of
machinery (incorporating the patent museum).
The committee thought the collections' value
should not, however, be assessed solely by their
utility for teaching. (ref. 39) The Treasury thought the
site bigger than necessary, and would have
abandoned the Queen's Gate frontage to private
houses. But early in 1890 Lord Salisbury's
Government agreed to buy the land, which it did
in March. (ref. 40) From 1893 the 'Science Museum'
had its own Director, independently of the 'Art
Museum'. (ref. 41)
In 1891, however, the Government's attention
had become concentrated on the enlargement of
the main South Kensington Museum buildings,
and secondarily on new laboratories and classrooms
for the Royal College of Science. One
scheme would have housed the science collections
on the principal part of the newly acquired site
with the college departments at the east end, (ref. 42)
but teaching requirements soon predominated. A
Select Committee of the House of Commons in
1898 recommended that the collections should be
primarily 'educational' with no undue preponderance
of 'historical' over 'effective' exhibits. (ref. 43)
Advocacy of the claims of the museum tended, in
fact, to merge into advocacy of laboratoryteaching, (ref. 44)
and when for a time economical
considerations threatened to crowd the new
college buildings on to the site east of Exhibition
Road it was suggested by the Treasury that the
'scholastic' parts of the science collections should
be separated from the rest and be placed there
also. (ref. 45) This was resisted, but the building from
1900 onward of the new physical and chemical
departments of the Royal College of Science
reduced the share of the four and a half acres
available for the science museum, particularly as
in 1899 the Government told the British Museum
that the extensive grounds of the Natural History
Museum to the south would not be encroached
upon. (ref. 46) To make matters worse, in 1905 the
south corner site in Imperial Institute and
Exhibition Roads was rather casually appropriated
for a Post Office and meteorological office (fn. b)
(plan c between pages 54–5). (ref. 47) Southward of it,
there was a plan to devote the Exhibition Road
frontage to a new much-needed building for the
Royal College of Art. (ref. 48) It was necessary for
advocates of a science museum once more to
mount a campaign in its support. (They would
have noted in 1906 that the German Emperor
had laid the foundation stone of Von Seidl's impressive
Deutsches Museum of science in
Munich.)
Sir Norman Lockyer, the professor of astronomical
physics in the Royal College, was an
active propagandist in 1907 in his periodical
Nature, and, as an 1851 Commissioner, goaded
that body to further effort. (ref. 49) Its Board of Management
was then inclined to torpor, and rebuffed
him, (ref. 50) but another Commissioner, a 'patient and
tactful' worker in the same cause, was the chemist
and Liberal Member of Parliament, Sir Henry
Roscoe. (ref. 51) In 1909 he led a powerful deputation
of scientists to Asquith's well-disposed Education
minister, Sir Walter Runciman, now controlling
the collections in succession to the Science and
Art Department. It stressed the contrast with the
science museums of Paris and Munich. (ref. 52) The
outlay needed was assessed at £306,000. It was
now thought the Commissioners would give
£200,000 towards it. (ref. 53) Cross-currents of motive
were, however, at that time (1909–10) causing a
crisis in the Commissioners' affairs, and the effect
was to reduce their offer, made in the summer of
1910, to the £100,000 of 1876. (ref. 54) This, however,
sufficed, although in the end the Commissioners
contributed only about £35,000 (see page
72). The Board of Education, which wielded
greater weight in the determination of governmental
policy than the old Department, had
already appointed a committee under the industrialist,
Sir Hugh Bell, to advise it on buildings
for the Science Museum (and for the Geological
Museum). (ref. 55) It was a momentous step, for there
was now an effective will to act on positive
recommendations.
A demonstration of this was a request by the
Office of Works to the British Museum in June
1910 to move the 'spirit building' of the Natural
History Museum so that the Science Museum
might be built without undue fire-risk up to the
boundary line indicated by the Government in
1899 (Plate 74b; plans c, d between pages 54–5). (ref. 56)
In August the Treasury accepted the Commissioners'
offer. (ref. 57) For nearly a year, however,
the problem of the spirit building prevented
progress and a controversy between zoologists and
other scientists raged in the public press. King
George V took a sympathizing interest in the
difficulties and the luminous intellects of a Liberal
cabinet committee weighed the claims of the
Natural History and Science Museums. (fn. c)
(ref. 58) The
problem disappeared in June 1911 with the
discovery that the Science Museum could be
safely placed near the spirit building if its south
wall was windowless. (ref. 59)
In July 1910 the Bell Committee had issued a
preliminary report, recommending the Exhibition
Road-Queen's Gate site. (ref. 60) In March 1911 it
issued a fuller report, and a second part in April
1912. It followed earlier committees in stressing
the museum's practical usefulness for scientific
and technical training, and the merit of displaying
'appliances which hold honoured place in the
progress of Science or in the history of invention'.
But it emphasized also the museum's broader role
in giving the common visitor 'an opportunity of
obtaining at least general ideas on the subjects
which the Collections illustrate'. The inclusion of
new branches of science as they developed was
important—for example, electrical engineering
and oceanography. The general architectural
form was outlined, in which the committee was
aided by Sir Henry Tanner of the Office of
Works and the past and present Presidents of the
Royal Institute of British Architects, Ernest
George and Leonard Stokes. Simplicity was
recommended, and direct access to the different
parts. Side-lit galleries, some 35 feet wide by
20 feet high, were preferred, with windows as
broad as possible and rising to the ceilings. Two
or three large top-lit halls with 'factory-light'
glazing might be included, to house with adequate
dignity the larger monuments in the history of
invention, and to serve the visitor as points of
orientation. The least possible division of the
floor-space was recommended, and no particular
provision was considered necessary for the
display-requirements of the various sections of the
museum, which were thought not to differ
much. (ref. 61) In the later report (probably in conformity
with some preliminary plans for the
eastern part of the site by the Office of Works) the
committee recommended a four-storeyed arrangement,
and the introduction of a central hall
surrounded by open galleries. (ref. 62)
The committee thought it best to limit building
to the eastern third initially, to enable practical
experience so gained to be utilized in designing the
rest. (ref. 62)
In July 1912 the President of the Board of
Education, doubtless mindful of the important
architectural competition that had been held for
the Victoria and Albert Museum's completion,
as well as the current competition for the Board
of Trade's new offices, asked the First Commissioner
of Works to enlist 'the very best
architectural brains' by a similar competition.
Lord Beauchamp, although anticipating 'the
hostility of the Profession', was adamant that his
department should retain the designing of its first
major educational building at South Kensington. (fn. d)
(ref. 63)
One of Tanner's assistants, (Sir) Richard
Allison, was chosen architect. (ref. 64) In the summer of
1912 he visited the science museums in Edinburgh,
Brussels, Paris and Munich. Following the
example of the last he chose reinforced concrete
on the Coignet system, and in October produced
sketch-designs. The cost of the eastern block was
expected to be upwards of £ 150,000 at 6½d. a
cubic foot—or a considerably cheaper rate than
some of the mid-Victorian buildings of the South
Kensington Museum. (ref. 65) The museum in its
entirety might cost £400,000. (ref. 66) After revision
(that made the ornamentation more 'severe') and
exhibition in the House of Commons, the design
was approved in March 1913. (ref. 67) It was more
heavily rusticated and modelled than the executed
version and more lavish in Portland stone, with
granite proposed for the entrances. (ref. 68) Work was
delayed by a strike but began in the summer of
1914. (ref. 69)
The contractors, Messrs. Leslie of Kensington,
completed the carcase, despite the shortage of
steelworkers, during the war years, and by 1918
it had been given a temporary front to permit its
occupation as governmental offices. (W. R.
Lethaby was interested by this façade 'with the
"style" left out', which repelled Sir Reginald
Blomfield.) (ref. 70) It remained until 1925, as opinion
within the Board of Education in 1921 (when the
anticipated cost of completion of this eastern block
had risen to £397,000 (ref. 71) ) was that 'economical,
utilitarian and educational' considerations gave
greater priority to the immediate makeshift
fitting-up of the central section of the eastern
block for museum use. (ref. 72) This eastern block was
now itself being visualized in three parts and its
architectural completion, especially in respect of
the easternmost section and façade, was deferred,
partly in the hope that building prices would
fall. (ref. 73) Some collections were brought in from the
Western Gallery (north of Imperial Institute
Road) in 1923. (ref. 74) In 1924 the Labour Government's President of the Board of Education, (Sir)
Charles Trevelyan, determined to put the work
on the eastern section and Exhibition Road front
in hand. (ref. 75) By that time the architectural design
had been simplified and cheapened and the
anticipated cost of completion reduced to some
£294,000. (ref. 76) But in the following year it became
known to the Office of Works (and to building
firms) that the work on the central section had
involved the contractors, Messrs. J. E. Johnson,
in 'very large losses'. Far from falling, building
prices were thought to have risen by a quarter
since 1921–2, and although tenders for the
eastern section were so high that the Treasury
intervened the Office of Works was allowed to
accept the lowest (from Messrs. Galbraith) in the
belief that a continuance of rising prices and impending
labour unrest would make postponement
uneconomic. The estimated total cost was now
£313,300. (ref. 77)
One factor in the high level of tenders was said
to be the great demand for Portland stone in
London at that time and a shortage of masons to
work it. Further changes therefore reduced its
employment on the front. The depth of bed was
lessened, and metalwork replaced stone between
the columns, thereby increasing the apparent
'influence of commercial on public architecture'
that has been detected in the façade. (ref. 78) The rustication was reduced and lightened. (fn. e) Inside, the
columns in the hall were faced with plaster instead
of marble. (ref. 79) The makeshift front had been
removed, exposing the interior, when Trevelyan's
Conservative successor, Lord Eustace Percy,
informed a cabinet committee in November 1925
that the museum had 'little value from the Board's
point of view' and that he wished the work suspended
or other use found for the building. (ref. 80) A
hasty review was made of possible lodgers—the
National Savings Committee, the 'Government
Chemist', the Imperial War Museum, the
Geological Museum, or the 'overflow' of whales
and insects from the Natural History Museum—but they were not installed and work proceeded. (ref. 81)
The westernmost section was, however, left in its
'temporary' state, and so remained until c.
1949. (ref. 82) The eastern block, of less than one and a
half acres, was thus brought to (partial) completion,
for opening by King George V in March
1928. (Three years before, in Munich, Hindenburg
had opened the Deutsches Museum,
covering some three and a half acres.) The cost
had been some £262,000. (ref. 83)
The building was well received by the press
(Plate 75a, b; fig. 43). Commentators noted the
incorporation of an elaborate system of underfloor
ducts supplying power to all parts of the
building, including compressed air to operate
models. The pleasant lucidity and simplicity of the
interior was contrasted favourably with the older
museum buildings nearby. No remark seems to
have been made on the application of a stone
façade expressing masonry construction to a
reinforced-concrete frame. The elevation (where
the ornamental stone-carving was admired) won
praise for its 'dignity'—an attribute much more
consciously sought after in this and the Geological
Museum than it had been in the old South
Kensington Museum. As The Architects' Journal
said, 'it is modern, but soberly British; post-war,
but not fantastic, or "cranky" like certain science
institutes on the Continent'. (ref. 84)
The practical effectiveness of the central
section was admired by the staff of the Geological
Museum, where the same scheme was to be
followed. (ref. 85) The architect credited with that
building, J. H. Markham, occurs in the Office of
Works' records after the war superintending the
Science Museum for Allison.
Figure 43:
Science Museum, eastern block, plan in 1928
Immediately on the opening of the Science
Museum the Board of Education began to press
for the completion of the plan. Allison and the
Museum's Director went to Munich in 1931 (as
the Royal Commission on museums had recommended
in the previous year) and urged the
adoption of a similarly comprehensive scheme. (ref. 86)
In 1932–3 building of the central block was in
prospect, partly as a measure against unemployment,
but had been postponed by 1935. (ref. 87) Plans
in 1937–8 to expand northward over the Royal
College of Science site instead of westward, thus
allowing room for the construction of an ethnographical
museum on Queen's Gate, formed part
of a scheme to make Imperial Institute Road a
dividing line between museums and teaching institutions. (ref. 88)
But at the outbreak of war nothing had
been done. (In Munich, the Deutches Museum
complex had by 1938 been extended in library
and conference buildings over some eight acres.)
In 1949 the old Southern Gallery was at last
demolished and the basement and ground floors
(only) of the central block constructed to the
design of W. Kendall of the Office of Works.
The western section of the eastern block was also
completed and the whole utilized for the science
section of the Festival of Britain in 1951. Some
of the collections, however, continued to be
housed in old buildings nearby until c. 1960. (ref. 89) The
upper carcase of the central block was added, also
to Kendall's design, in 1959–61, and public
communication opened to the north block of the
Natural History Museum which formed part of
the same scheme (plan d between pages 54–5). (ref. 90)
The provision of this central block enabled the
Science Museum to set in motion a scheme for
the modernization of all its galleries. The first
galleries in the central block were opened to the
public in 1963 (Sailing Ships and Aeronautics),
the last gallery (Domestic Appliances) being
opened in 1973. The entrance from Exhibition
Road was altered internally in 1966 and a new
science library (previously housed in the Royal
College of Science building) was constructed in
Imperial College in 1966–9. But a site which The
Builder in 1911 condemned as too confined (ref. 91)
remained in 1974 one-third unoccupied.