British Museum (Natural History) General Guide

by British Museum

According to the terms of Sir Hans Sloane’s will, this collection was purchased for the sum of £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.”

Montagu House, Bloomsbury.

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 Harley Collection was obtained by purchase at the same time as the Sloane, and the three were brought together under the designation of “the British Museum,” placed under the care of a body of Trustees,[1] 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 after application in writing, and limited to ten persons, for three hours in the day. Instead of being allowed to inspect the cases at their leisure, visitors 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 daily opening, with longer hours in summer, dates from 1879.

Growth of Collections necessitating additional space.

Resolution to separate Natural History Collection.

At the time of the foundation of the Museum, the site allotted seemed amply sufficient for its purposes; but gradually, as the collections 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 be 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.”

Purchase of a Site at South Kensington.

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.

Competitive designs.

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 Sir Richard Owen’s suggestions, being proposed as a model in respect to dimensions and internal arrangement.