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BOOK III, Chap. VII. RECON

STRUCTORS

AND PRO-
JECTORS.

MR.

PROJECT OF
RECON-
STRUCTION

less than an acre and a half. The price, therefore, may be set down at sixty-five thousand pounds.

Buildings are estimated in the same report to cost about two pounds per square foot, reckoned upon the total internal area of the principal floors, without the basement. This calculation is founded on buildings consisting of a basement, a ground floor, and one upper floor. The OLDFIELD'S buildings proposed by the writer are in one respect more costly than these, as their basements bear a larger proportion to those floors on which the cost is calculated. But in two other respects they are more (1858-1860) economical:-1. Because they include, in one part, a second floor, which swells the space from which the expense is calculated, without involving any addition to the basement. 2. Because some of the galleries on the ground floor are not really separate buildings, but parts of a single block of buildings, subdivided merely by partition walls. On the whole, therefore, the estimate of two pounds per foot seems the safest basis of calculation.

continued.

OF BUILD

INGS.

Now the quantity of internal area or floor space in the proposed new buildings is

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MEANS OF
FUTURE EX-
TENSION.

This gives, therefore, one hundred and sixty thousand seven hundred and twenty pounds for buildings, which, added to sixty-five thousand pounds for ground, would amount to two hundred and twenty-five thousand seven hundred and twenty pounds. A further sum must be added for alterations of the existing building, particularly for the removal and reconstruction of the staircase, and the formation of the two rooms described as III (69) and XIII (15). Assuming the expense of these alterations, quite conjecturally, at ten thousand pounds, the total cost would be two hundred and thirty-five thousand seven hundred and twenty pounds. The largeness of the valuation allowed for the ground gives reason to believe that the actual expense of ground and buildings would not exceed, and might probably fall short of, this estimate.

[In concluding his remarks on this plan of reconstruction, Mr. OLDFIELD points out that if ever hereafter further extensions should be required, they might be obtained without material disturbance of the proposed galleries. For Antiquities, one or more additional houses might be purchased either in Bedford Square, commencing with No. 4, or in Charlotte 1860, pp. 245, Street, commencing with No. 3. The former would be required for the ad fin. prolongation of the Greek, Græco-Roman, or Roman Galleries; the

Appendix to.
Minutes of
Evidence,

latter for the Etruscan or Phoenician. For the minor collections on the BOOK III, upper floors either side would be equally appropriate. If further space Chap. VII. were needed for Natural History, galleries might be built as suggested by Professor MASKELYNE, extending either northwards to Montague AND PROPlace, or eastwards to Montague Street, as found convenient.]

To the clear and forcible exposition of his plan, thus given by its framer in the paper submitted to the Committee of 1860, many further elucidations were added in evidence. But enough has already been quoted for the perfect intelligibility of the plans so proposed for the sanction of the Trustees and of Parliament. 'I think,' said Mr. OLDFIELD, when questioned, in the Committee, as to the extent of provision for the probable future requirements of the Museum, 'the proper mode is to secure so much space as will at least meet those demands which are likely to occur during the construction of the building; and then, above all, to adopt a system of construction which would at any future time admit of an extension, without derangement of that which now exists, and so would obviate the very great expense and inconvenience which has hitherto occurred from alterations and reconstructions.'

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In reporting upon this plan, originally framed in 1858, the Committee of 1860, after comparing with it two other but only partial plans of extension and rearrangement, prepared respectively by Mr. Sydney SMIRKE and by Mr. Nevil STORY-MASKELYNE, observe: Your Committee have reason to think that if any of these plans were adoptedinvolving the [immediate] purchase of not more than two acres of land, with the [immediately] requisite buildings and alterations-the cost would not exceed three hundred thousand pounds. If, however, only this limited portion of land should be at once acquired, it is probable that the price of what remains would be enhanced. If the whole were to

RECON

STRUCTORS

JECTORS.

Minutes of
Evidence,

June, 1860,

Q. 2034, p.

143.

BOOK III,
Chap. VII.
RECON-

STRUCTORS

AND PRO-
JECTORS.

of Book III.

be purchased, as your Committee have already recommended, the cost above stated would be, of course, increased.'

The recommendation here referred to has been already quoted in a preceding chapter, together with a statement of the grounds on which it was based.

The only additional elucidation, on this head, which it seems necessary to give may be found in a passage of the evidence of one of the Trustees, Sir Roderick MURCHISON, See Chap. III who, in 1858, with other eminent men of science, presented a Memorial to the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, praying that the British Museum might not be dismembered by any transference of the Natural History Collections to another locality. After saying: 'I entirely coincide still in every opinion that was expressed in that Memorial, and I have since seen additional and stronger reasons for wishing that [its prayer] should be supported,' Sir Roderick added: 'When it was brought before us [that is, before a SubCommittee of Trustees] in evidence, that if we were largely to extend the British Museum at once in sitú, and that as large a building were to be made in sitú as might be made at Kensington, we then learned that the expense would be greater. But I have since seen good grounds to believe that by purchasing the ground rents or the land, to north, east, or west, of the Museum, according to a plan which I believe has now been prepared and laid before the members of the Committee [referring to that of Mr. OLDFIELD, just described], and availing ourselves of the gradual* power of enlargement . . . . . the Nation would be put to a much less Evidence, expense for several years to come, and would in the end 1860, Q.1243- realise all those objects which it is the aim † of men of science to obtain.'

Minutes of

1250, pp. 102,

103.

* Printed by oversight general' in the Minutes of Evidence.
Printed 'object' in Minutes of Evidence, as above.

ON.

Chap. VII.

STRUCTORS

The chief alternative plan is based on the transference of BOOK 111, the Natural History Collections to an entirely new site, and RECONon the devotion to the uses of the Literary and Archæological Departments of the Museum of the whole of the space so JECTORS. freed from the scientific departments.

The Committee of 1860 condemned this plan in the main (but only, as it seems, by a single voice upon a division), but what that Committee had under consideration was only the first form into which the plan of separation had been shaped. At the end of the year 1861 and beginning of 1862, that plan was again brought before a Sub-Committee of the Trustees, at the express instance of the Lords of Her Majesty's Treasury, and it was thus reported upon :

AND PRO

PLAN FOR
FERENCE

THE TRANS

OF THE
NATURAL

HISTORY TIONS TO (OR ELSE

COLLEC

KENSINGTON

WHERE).

1861-62.

SUB-COM

MITTEE OF

Your Committee, to whom it has been referred to consider the best REPORT OF manner of carrying into effect the Treasury Minute of the thirteenth of November, 1861, and the Resolution passed at the special general TRUSTEES, meeting of the third of December of the same year, have unanimously Jan., 1862. agreed to the following report :»

The Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury state in that MINUTE OF Minute, ‘That, in their judgment, some of the collections ought to be TREASURY. removed from the present buildings, and that they will be prepared to make proposals at the proper time to the Royal Commissioners of the Exhibition of 1851, with a view to the provision, on the estate of the Commissioners, of space and buildings, which shall be adequate to receive in particular, at first the Mineralogical, Geological, and Palæontological Collections, and ultimately, in case it shall be thought desirable, all those of the Natural History Departments.' Their Lordships, after having invited the Trustees to prosecute the further examination of the question, continue as follows:-'It will have to be considered what other or minor branches of the collections may, with propriety or advantage, be removed to other sites, or even made over, if in any case it might seem proper, to other establishments.'

It is to this Report of 1862 that the accompanying lithographic fac-similes of the original illustrative plans belong. Two of them show the then existing arrangements of the principal floors; the other two show the then proposed alterations and re-arrangements.

BOOK III,

Chap. VII.
RECON-

STRUCTORS

AND PRO

JECTORS.

TIONS OF
NATURAL

HISTORY TO
BE REMOVED.

BOTANY.

ETHNOLOGI

CAL COLLEC-
TION TO BE
REMOVED.

Your Committee have, therefore, thought it their duty at the outset to examine whether all the Natural History Collections, viz. the Zoological and Botanical, in addition to the Geological, Palæontological, and Mineralogical, specified in the Treasury Minute, might with propriety and advantage be removed from the present British Museum buildings. The importance, as regards science, of preserving together all objects of Natural History, was forcibly urged by Sir R. MURCHISON, at the special general meeting of the third of December. In a Memorial laid before the Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1858, and signed by more than one hundred and twenty eminent promoters and cultivators of science, it was represented that as the chief end and aim of natural history is to demonstrate the harmony which pervades the whole, and the unity of principle, which bespeaks the unity of the Creative Cause, it is essential that the different classes of natural objects should be preserved in juxtaposition under the roof of one great building.' Your Committee concur in this opinion, and they have come to the conclusion that it is essential to the advantage of science and of the collections which are to remain in Bloomsbury, that the removal of all the objects of Natural History should take place, and, as far as practicable, should be simultaneously effected.

*

With regard to Botany, it is a question whether the existence of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew does not suggest an exception as to the place to which the British Museum Botanical Collection should be removed, reserving a small series for the illustration of fossil Botany, in connexion with Palæontology.

It is to be kept in view that the removal of the Palæontology, Geology, and Mineralogy, would leave unoccupied only two very inconveniently placed rooms in the basement, besides the north half of the north gallery on the upper floor (about four hundred feet in length, by thirtysix in width); whereas the recently imported marbles from Halicarnassus, Cnidus, Geronta, and Cyrene, fill completely the space under the colonnade, extending to about five hundred and forty feet in length. Nor can your Committee omit to add, that should the removal of the Botany and Zoology be delayed, the final and systematic arrangement of the collections which are to remain must be equally delayed; while, if any portions of these were removed to other situations in the Museum, or their final transfer postponed, many of the objects retained would have again to be shifted for the sake of congruity and economy of

space.

It is, therefore, recommended by your Committee, that all the Natural
History Collections be speedily and simultaneously removed.
Together with these the Ethnological Collection ought to be provided

* Parliamentary Return, No. 456, of the Session 1858.

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