CHAPTER XVIII - Imperial College
The Imperial College of Science and
Technology was founded in 1907 by the
conjunction of three institutions previously
established at South Kensington. Two of these—the Royal College of Science and the Royal
School of Mines—were maintained by the State
and were already in nominal union, while the
third—the City and Guilds College—was administered
by the City and Guilds of London
Institute and its separate identity posed some
formal problems before a 'delegacy' finally
integrated it into the new college in 1910.
The three constituent elements carried the
history of the college back through the Victorian
struggle for the advancement of technological
education, in which the names of Prince Albert
and T. H. Huxley are prominent. In the immediate
circumstances of its foundation the
strongest impulse was a fear that the United
Kingdom would succumb to the advanced
technology of Germany and other rivals in a
world of widening markets and a widening
strategy of industrial and military force, while
the most important name is Haldane's. The comparatively
swift and purposeful realization of the
idea of Imperial College shows, indeed, no
ordinary grip on the levers of power. (ref. 1) The
example of the Berlin Technical High School was
throughout much in mind, and the new project
was often known as the British Charlottenburg.
In the last years of Victoria's reign Haldane
had been able to gratify the Prince of Wales by
assisting the removal of London University into
part of the Imperial Institute's building. The
Prince, as King Edward VII, was in turn a help
to Haldane in his work for the new college and in
obtaining a site on the 1851 Exhibition Commissioners'
estate. By 1902 Lord Rosebery (the
Chancellor of London University), A. J. Balfour
and the Duke of Devonshire were involved in
Haldane's scheme to create a trust fund of
£600,000 for the intended foundation, while an
important ally was Sidney Webb, under whose
influence the Technical Education Board of the
London County Council produced in that year
what Rosebery called a 'striking report' on the
application of science to industry. Among other
things, this called for the establishment in London
of an institution for advanced technological
training comparable to the Berlin example. (ref. 2) In
1903 the Council agreed to a request from Rosebery,
warmly backed by The Times, that it would
give £20,000 per annum towards the proposed
college, to make London the educational centre
of the Empire in scientific technology. (ref. 3) Another
ally, to whom Haldane paid tribute, was the
Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, Sir Francis
Mowatt. Under his chairmanship (subsequently
devolving on Haldane himself) a Departmental
Committee was set up in 1904, primarily to report
on the future of the Royal College of Science
which had just been provided with new buildings
(see below). Other members included Sir William
Abney, Sir Philip Magnus, Sir Francis Ogilvie,
Sir Arthur Rücker, Sidney Webb and Sir Julius
Wernher. By that time Haldane's evangelism
among industrialists was taking effect: the firm of
Wernher, Beit had offered £100,000 towards a
new foundation, and in an interim report in 1905
the committee asked the Government whether in
these hopeful circumstances it would permit the
integration in a new college of the two associated
national schools of science at South Kensington.
After a favourable reply the committee published
a final report in 1906. (ref. 4) Acknowledging the impossibility
that we should 'instantaeously compel
ourselves to feel the German love of education for
its own sake', and admitting that 'the attitude of
the employer and the parent' had hitherto obstructed
the spread of higher education, the committee
nevertheless urged that with the co-operation of
the City and Guilds of London Institute a new
college should be formed out of the existing South
Kensington foundations. Initially, the emphasis
should be strongly on mining, metallurgy and
engineering. In July 1907 a royal charter constituted
Imperial College 'to give the highest
specialized instruction and to provide the fullest
equipment for the most advanced training and
research in various branches of science especially
in its application to industry'. (ref. 5)
Sites for new buildings were made available by
the 1851 Exhibition Commissioners in Prince
Consort Road (leased for 999 years from 1909 at
£5 per annum). (ref. 6) Three important buildings,
however, already existed nearby in the tenure of
the three constituent bodies. Of these, the oldest
survives, and since 1932 has been called the
Huxley Building.
Huxley Building
This building had been erected in 1867–71 for
the Science and Art Department, initially with
the main intention of housing a school of naval
architecture and marine engineering, which had
been established in 1864 at South Kensington
under the joint auspices of the Admiralty and the
Department. The school was, however, transferred
to Greenwich in 1873, almost as soon as it
had begun to use the new premises, and before the
interior was entirely finished; and the building
was in fact first permanently occupied, late in the
previous year, by a variety of scientific departments
removed from the Government (later
Royal) School of Mines in Jermyn Street. These
subsequently expanded to become the Royal
College of Science. (ref. 7) The building was thus a
slightly earlier contemporary of the Clarendon
Laboratory at Oxford (1868–72) and the
Cavendish at Cambridge (1872–4). (For the
Huxley Building see Plates 14c, 58, 59; fig. 39
and plan-sheet A in end pocket.)
The School of Mines had been founded in
1851 as the Government School of Mines and
Science Applied to the Arts. In 1853 it was
brought into the Science and Art Department and
in the same year united with the Royal College of
Chemistry in Oxford Street, which had been
founded in 1845 under the auspices of Prince
Albert. The latter's intention was that through
these connexions the School of Mines should
become a school 'for the diffusion of Science
generally as applied to productive Industry'. In that
respect, however, the head of the School appointed
in 1855, Sir Roderick Murchison, was a disappointment.
Despite receiving 'a pretty little
lecture' from the Prince on his ideas he proved to
be chiefly 'a good hammer-man', who viewed the
School 'simply as the School of British Geology
and Mines', and he was largely successful in
resisting its expansion into general science. (ref. 8) But
the professors of physics, chemistry, and biology,
hampered by lack of laboratories, became willing
to move from Jermyn Street.
The building at South Kensington was in
preparation in 1865, when the professor of the
Royal College of Chemistry, A. W. Hofmann,
promised the secretary of the Department, Henry
Cole, to send him plans of laboratories being built
in Berlin and Bonn. (ref. 9) The inclusion of considerable
laboratory accommodation (chiefly for chemistry
and metallurgy) beyond the strict requirements of
naval architecture was evidently an idea incubated
in the Department, particularly by Cole, with a
hopeful eye to the Oxford Street and Jermyn
Street establishments. (ref. 10) A plan by the Department's
architect, Francis Fowke, of November
1865 shows 'Schools for Naval Architecture and
Science' on this site (fig. 2 on plan-sheet A in end
pocket), (ref. 11) and Fowke made a 'sketch elevation'
before his death in the following month. (ref. 12) His
building would have been linked by a bridge across
Exhibition Road to his proposed Natural History
Museum, and would presumably have harmonized
with that design. It would have been an
appreciably smaller building than that erected, and
Cole's diary seems to bear out the 'inspired' statement
made in The Times in 1871, that neither
Fowke's plan nor his elevation had been used. The
diary suggests that in the summer of 1866 Cole,
Richard Redgrave, and Fowke's successor, Henry
Scott, recommenced the work of designing a
structure which may not have been replanned to
its present dimensions before January 1867.
(Cole says the lengthening of the front was
suggested by his friend, the amateur of art, Sir
Coutts Lindsay.) The foundations were begun in
June of that year. (ref. 13)
By June 1868 the Department was contermplating
the attraction of 'other branches of
science' than chemistry to South Kensington. (ref. 14)
An ally was T. H. Huxley, who as professor of
biology at the School of Mines opposed the
limitation of its scope. As early as 1864 he had
been discussing science teaching at South Kensington
with Cole and the Department's inspector
for science, J. F. D. Donnelly. (ref. 15) In January 1869
Cole records that the three of them 'agreed to a
National Training College for Science at S.K.',
and it became the Department's aim to expand the
'Schools' into a 'College' of applied science. (ref. 16)
Gladstone's Chancellor of the Exchequer, Robert
Lowe, was, however, unsympathetic to the
expansion of the School's scope, for which the
Treasury could find no authority. (ref. 17) Work was
stopped at second-floor level in 1869, and
building materials lay unused on the site during
that winter of 1869–70. Progress was not
resumed until responsibility for the Department's
building-operations had been transferred to the
Office of Works. Funds then flowed again and
work proceeded in the latter part of 1870. (ref. 18)
Partly under Huxley's influence, the Royal
Commission on Scientific Instruction recommended
in March 1871 that because of the lack of
facilities at Jermyn Street for laboratory teaching
the Royal School of Mines and Royal College of
Chemistry should remove to South Kensington. (ref. 19)
Conflict of opinion at Jermyn Street was partially
resolved in July 1872 when it was decided that
the College of Chemistry, and the physics and
biology classes should go to South Kensington,
which they did in 1872–3. (ref. 20) The building thus
first came into significant use as the home of
Huxley's famous course of laboratory teaching in
biology. The tardy provision of equipment,
however, annoyed the professors, and extended
into 1874. (ref. 21)
The diversion of the school of naval architecture
from South Kensington to Greenwich
facilitated the removal of other departments—mechanics, metallurgy and geology—into the
building from Jermyn Street by 1880. (ref. 22) In that
year the Education Committee under Earl
Spencer renewed the attempt to have the remaining
departments of mineralogy and mining
transferred to South Kensington. (ref. 23) In this it was
unsuccessful, but the aim of establishing a general
college of applied science was achieved in so far as
departments of mathematics, astronomy, botany
and agriculture were added to the existing classes
and the whole was reconstituted as the 'Normal
School of Science and Royal School of Mines'.
Under that title it was reinaugurated in October
1881, with T. H. Huxley as Dean. (ref. 24)
In Huxley's last year before retirement in 1885
H. G. Wells entered 'that burly red-brick and
terra-cotta building' (Plate 58a) as a student, (ref. 25)
and something of the genius loci is expressed in
Love and Mr. Lewisham. The Normal School
became the Royal College of Science in 1890. In
the 1890's the department of mining finally
moved to South Kensington (ref. 26) and by 1897 overcrowding
required various sections of the College
to be inconveniently lodged west of Exhibition
Road. The laboratories had been designed largely
under Hofmann's guidance (with some consultation
of his successor, Frankland), and with the
help of a survey of laboratories in German cities
and at Zurich in 1871–2. (ref. 27) But thirty years later
they were 'antiquated', while their location on a
main street frontage subjected them to vibration. (ref. 28)
(Sir) Aston Webb was therefore commissioned by
the Office of Works to design, in conjunction with
his completion of the South Kensington Museum,
a new building for the Royal College of Science in
Imperial Institute Road, to which the physics and
chemistry departments were transferred in
1906–7.
The Huxley Building is a monument to
the collaborative method of design practised in the
Science and Art Department. Dating from the
same years as the Albert Hall, it was created from
a similar provenance. The Director of New
Buildings, Henry Scott, had the credit and
responsibility for the final result. But Cole and
Redgrave were certainly consultant in the work:
the former's son said that he had 'insisted' on the
inclusion of the upper arcaded gallery on the
Exhibition Road front, intended 'for open air
work', and he sketched an alternative finish for
the corner pavilions in May 1868 (Plate 58b). (ref. 29)
At that time talk about the upper arcade included
a reference to 'Cole' columns, (ref. 30) and some do
indeed bear his motto 'Regem Serva Deum Cole'
(Plate 59b).
Fowke's part in the executed design was
evidently slight: on the other hand, the School
was consciously modelled on the style established
by him at the adjacent museum, (ref. 31) and the strong
vertically of its smooth brick piers owes something
to the front of his Residences there. Much of
the decorative detail was taken directly from that
on the museum by Godfrey Sykes (died 1866).
His admired Lecture Theatre columns were
duplicated in the ground-floor arcade (where
they encase iron stanchions, Plates 13a, 58c, d). (ref. 32)
The modelling of Sykes's decorative designs
and much of the other decoration inside and out
was the work of his pupil James Gamble. (ref. 33)
Gamble was also very much involved in the design
of the upper arcade. (ref. 34) He himself laid claim to
'settling the general appearance' of the building. (ref. 35)
By his colleagues in the National Art Training
School he was regarded as having been responsible
for the architectural elevation, (ref. 36) and there is a
drawing by him of a colonnade and gateway
proposed, but not executed, in 1869–70 to link
the School with the museum that is suggestive of
his authorship of their design. (ref. 37) The belief that the
was in fact the 'architect' of the exterior of the
building, however, probably owes something to
jealousy of Scott among the Department's
decorative artists and something simply to the
great importance they attached to decorative
detailing.
Figure 39:
Huxley Building, formerly Science Schools, in c. 1873
Gamble designed the terra-cotta chimneys and
the street-front balustrade and seats, and the
majolica soffits of the ground-floor arcade (Plate
58c) and (in colour) of the entrance passageway
and bridge. He also modelled the interior plaster
details. His designs for terra-cotta lamps on the
street front and for the iron gate at the north end,
considered 'strikingly original' by the Department,
were not executed. For the latter the office
of Works in 1885 insisted on substituting a
cheaper design by J. Starkie Gardner and
Company. (ref. 38)
The coloured mosaics in the tympana of the
pediments were executed in 1871–2 by the
museum's mosaic class, to the designs of F. W.
Moody of the National Art Training School.
An assistant of Moody's said later that Gamble
would have preferred reliefs to mosaics. (ref. 39) 3 Moody
was also the designer and his students the executants
of the spectacular display of sgraffito
decoration which in 1871–3 was (by reason of its
avowedly experimental character, using various
techniques) applied to the back of the building,
where only the upper part is much seen (Plates
14c, 59d). (ref. 40)
Inside the building another hand appears, that
of the architect J. W. Wild. As elsewhere at
South Kensington he acted as Scott's assistant, and
in the later recollection of a former student of the
Art School employed on the museum building it
was Wild who had planned the interior. (ref. 41) This,
with its very high compartments, is less straightforward
than it looks from outside (fig. 39).
Cole's diary seems to associate Wild's name with
the staircase, (ref. 42) and a certain affinity of treatment
between that and the interior of the Cast Courts
of the museum, where Wild was the effective
architect, suggests that he may have designed that
feature (Plate 59a). Indeed, on the street front
also the accentuation of the top storey has a hint
of the Cast Courts about it.
The remarkable 'modernism' of the inner
courtyard (Plate 59c) adds another element to the
'style' of this disparate building.
In 1871 Cole was confident the cost would not
exceed the estimated total of some £66,000, or
10d. per cubic foot. (ref. 43) The workmanship was
admired. (fn. a) Mosaic marble pavements were laid by
convict labour. (ref. 45) The expensive red Fareham
bricks of the front were all gauged work, and
the fine joints were achieved by dipping the
bricks instead of laying them on trowelled
mortar.
The Builder thought that the terra-cotta
'medallions' on the stylobate of the ground-floor
arcade (Plate 58d) were 'abortions', but the
building was welcomed by The Times as 'a sight
good for eyes tired of the eternal stucco', and
Viollet-le-Duc liked the look of the brand-new,
sunlit terra-cotta. (ref. 46) In 1880 The Architect
thought details worth illustration as 'Bits from the
Modern School of English Architecture', (ref. 47) and
however unfashionable it became the building did
not lack subsequent admirers. (fn. b)
At present (1974) it is occupied by the departments
of mathematics and meteorology of
Imperial College, but it is intended to make over
the building to the Victoria and Albert Museum
when those departments move into a new building
being erected in Queen's Gate. The name Huxley
Building will then be transferred to that and the
adjacent Physics building in Prince Consort
Road, and it is intended that the present Huxley
Building will be renamed the Henry Cole
Building.
Next in age to the Huxley Building (and now
demolished) were the original premises of the
City and Guilds College, built in 1881–4 to a
design by Alfred Waterhouse, simultaneously
with the later stages of his Natural History
Museum.
City and Guilds College
From the late 1860's onwards there had been a
growing opinion that the Livery Companies of
the City of London should contribute more to the
encouragement of technical education for industry,
and increasingly this became an object
with their critics. (ref. 49) In the large provincial cities
colleges of science or technology were being
established, and in 1876 some City Companies
decided to combine their efforts to that end. An
executive committee was formed. Its chairman
was Lord Selborne, a past and future Lord
Chancellor (and member of the Mercers'
Company) and its deputy chairman (Sir) Frederick
Bramwell. In 1877 it asked six prominent
advocates of technical education to make suggestions
towards a national scheme. Among other
questions they were asked if a central teaching
institution should be set up in London, and
whether it should include a 'technical library,
museum and laboratories . . . whereby the industrial
improvements and advances of foreign
countries may from time to time, as they arise,
be made known in England'. All the advisers,
including T. H. Huxley, (Sir) J. F. D. Donnelly
and (Sir) Douglas Galton, thought the establishment
of a central institution vital, but anything
beyond classrooms a luxury. All were opposed to
its giving direct instruction in specific trades.
Huxley in particular saw its chief (though not
sole) value in the training of teachers rather than
of the personnel of industry, and warned against
drawing the latter too much within its orbit and
thereby 'substituting exhausted book-worms for
shrewd practical men in our works and factories'.
The committee, however, recommended to the
Companies, in 1878, that the school should be
established not only to supply teachers to 'local
trades schools' but also 'superior workmen, foremen,
managers and principals of manufactories'.
This strikingly wide diversity of students, comprehending
artisans and the sons of factory
owners, would be instructed in applied physics,
chemistry, mechanics and art: the inclusion of
applied art showed how at that stage the scheme
was linked backwards to the 'industrial university'
of the Prince Consort as much as forward to the
present Imperial College. The Committee
followed Huxley in recommending that in the
building, which might cost £35,000, 'regard
should be had rather to what is wanted in the
inside, than what will look well from the outside'. (ref. 50)
(For the City and Guilds College see Plate 67;
plans b, c between pages 54–5 and fig. 40.)
At first a site on the Embankment was in
favour. (ref. 51) This was proving unobtainable, however,
when in July 1878 the 1851 Exhibition
Commissioners announced in their Sixth Report a
determination to devote more of their resources to
the encouragement of scientific education. An
important part of their estate was then on offer to
the Government for a science museum and
laboratories. (ref. 52) But by the beginning of 1879 it
became known that the Government was unlikely
to take up the offer. Negotiations were
therefore opened, largely between Lord Selborne
and Lord Spencer (on behalf of the Commissioners)
for the appropriation of a site on the
estate to so mutually congenial a purpose. (ref. 53) From
the first, however, many in the City were reluctant
to see the technical institution go to South
Kensington. The Companies' chief trade school
was being established in Finsbury, and there was
some feeling that the Commissioners' estate was
ill-placed for artisan students. (ref. 54) Bramwell pointed
out that it was 'within cheap railway distance of
wholesome suburban lodging,' but admitted to
sharing some of the 'instinctive repugnance' to
'South Kensington', which, personified in the
officers of the Science and Art Department, 'has
got the disposition or faculty of swallowing and
assimilating that which comes within its grasp'. (ref. 55)
Seen from the City the Commissioners and the
Department had something of a common
'governmental' complexion that induced nervousness.
This was not diminished when in the summer
of 1879 the Commissioners required, before
granting a lease, that the newly constituted City
and Guilds of London Institute should be augmented
by their own representatives and ex
officio representatives of the Royal Society and
other scientific societies. (The reinforcement was
approved by Huxley, otherwise rather a sympathizer
with 'City' sentiment.) The alternative use
of Baron Grant's former house in the Kensington
Road was considered, but by the end of the year
the Institute reconciled itself to the ex officio
members, and during the spring of 1880 the
principle of a lease was agreed with the Commissioners. (ref. 56)
The site was to be less extensive than that
which would have been made available for a
governmental scientific foundation, and would
compare ill with such imperial projects as the
Berlin Technical High School, begun the previous
year on a spacious suburban site at Charlottenburg.
In essentials, however, the project was kept
abreast of the best foreign practice, and this was
further ensured when, early in 1880, the Institute
acquired as Organizing Director (Sir) Philip
Magnus, whose membership of the Samuelson
Royal Commission on Technical Instruction
(1881–4) strengthened the Institute's knowledge
of Continental progress in that field.
Initially the site at South Kensington was to be
on the northern corner of Exhibition Road and
the new (Imperial Institute) Road. The City and
Guilds Institute then aspired to an imposing site
in Queen's Gate, looking along Queen's Gate
Terrace. (fn. c) The Commissioners refused, because
an institution 'having something of the nature of a
school' would depreciate land values there, and in
May shifted the intended site away from the
impressive corner position in Exhibition Road to
another further north (plan be between pages
54–5). (ref. 58) This was granted to the Institute, by a
lease dated in November, for 999 years at 1s. a
year. The amount that the Institute was willing
to spend on the building had risen to £50,000, and
the Commissioners required it to be completed
for this minimum outlay in the years 1881–4. (ref. 59)
In August 1880 the Institute's executive committee
chose Alfred Waterhouse as architect,
from a short list of three, the other two being
Norman Shaw and G. E. Street. (ref. 60) The committee's
chairman, Lord Selborne, was not
present, but it may be, as a student of Waterhouse
has suggested, that the latter was chosen by the
influence of this patron of his elsewhere. (ref. 61)
Twelve days later Sir Henry Cole, the former
head of the South Kensington Museum, then in
retirement, congratulated Waterhouse on the
proposal, of which he had heard, to give the
building a porte cochère—'So convenient but
uncommon'. (ref. 62) Unless this was a large misapprehension
it suggests that the process of
appointment regularized a fait accompli. Waterhouse's
experience as architect of similar buildings
(for example, Owen's College, Manchester, and
the College of Science, Leeds) was considered a
recommendation. (ref. 63) The trouble that he was
encountering over the cost and progress of the
Natural History Museum may (if it was known
to the Institute) have generated doubts, but the
speed of the work for the Institute proved
satisfactory and the control of cost reasonably so.
In November Waterhouse was instructed to
provide accommodation for 200 non-resident
students, and a specified number of classrooms,
laboratories (four for physics and one each for
chemistry and mechanics), lecture rooms, art
rooms, a library, space for 'collections', and
offices. Bramwell apparently proposed an inspection
of comparable buildings at Zurich, and
although it is not clear whether this took place,
Waterhouse, Bramwell, Magnus and Professor
Roscoe of Manchester arranged to visit J. A.
Cossin's Mason's College building at Birmingham,
as other supporters of the scheme had
done. (ref. 64) In January 1881 Waterhouse submitted
sketch-plans. What they were like is not known
but if Cole was well-informed they may have
differed considerably from the final version. He was
told to revise them and in February and March
produced sketch-plans and finished drawings that
in essentials correspond to the building as erected. (ref. 65)
In his report he estimated that the cost would
be about £66,000. This excess over the £50,000
maximum was partly caused by the inclusion of
more administrative accommodation. The
Institute accepted its Council's advice to proceed
on this basis, mindful 'of the large sums of money
that are being spent abroad and especially in
Germany, on technical education, and how
materially the trade of this country is being
affected for the worse by the absence of those
facilities for technical instruction which other
countries possess'. (ref. 66)
A reduction of height in the upper part of the
rear of the building was, however, insisted on by
the Commissioners' secretary, Henry Scott, and
their surveyor, Henry Hunt, to prevent the
obstruction of light to their Eastern Galleries. (ref. 67)
(As it happened, Scott had himself been the
responsible architect for that building, while
Hunt, as consultant surveyor to the Office of
Works, was clashing with Waterhouse over his
work at the Natural History Museum.) It was
presumably to accommodate this change that
Waterhouse introduced dormer windows into the
front slope of his roof.
In May 1881 the Commissioners accepted the
design, after submitting the elevation to the
President of the Royal Academy, Leighton. (ref. 68) To
comply with the lease and to permit inauguration
that year, a separate foundation contract was
made (with George Munday), (ref. 69) and in July the
Prince of Wales set up a founding column at a
ceremony where his and Lord Selborne's speeches
referred to the Prince Consort's vision and the
current rivalry from other industrial nations. The
total cost including fittings was expected to be
£75,000. Where exactly between practical and
theoretic teaching the institution's aim lay was
clear to The Builder, which commented that
'it is not an easy matter for any one to obtain a
distinct idea of the exact drift of either of these
speeches'. (In its own opinion the chief need was
for industry to learn economy in the use of
labour.) But most agreed the occasion was
historic. (ref. 70)
Figure 40:
City and Guilds College, ground-floor plan in 1888
1 Optical Laboratory
2 Physics Professor
3 Physics Classroom
4 Engineering Lecture Room
5 Hall
6 Engineering Professor
7 Storeroom
8 Lecture Room (Mathematics and Mechanics)
9 Professor
10 Classroom (Mathematics)
11 Mathematical Drawing
12 Preparation Rooms
13 Chemical Lecture Theatre
14 Physics and Mechanics Lecture Theatre
Waterhouse had already conferred with the
teaching staff at the Institute's Finsbury college
about the arrangement and equipment of the
building. Professor Roscoe and others were also
consulted. (ref. 71) An active member of the Institute,
and a friend of the South Kensington undertaking,
was E. C. Robins, himself an architect of
technical and other schools. Although not on the
South Kensington sub-committee he gave Waterhouse's
building favourable publicity and was
perhaps a helpful influence. (ref. 72) At least, the
directives given the architect were not such as to
delay the progress of planning and construction.
In dealings with the staff at South Kensington,
however, Magnus seems usually to have been an
intermediary. This caused discontent and perhaps
some failure to meet the teachers' requirements:
structural alterations (though possibly of no great
extent) were needed in the last stages of building. (ref. 73)
From 1883 Waterhouse had the help in fitting
up the building of a committee of experts—Sir
Frederick Abel, Bramwell, George Matthey,
(Sir) William Perkin and Sir William Siemens. (ref. 74)
The professors at South Kensington, W. E.
Ayrton, O. Henrici, W. C. Unwin and (especially)
H. E. Armstrong, were closely involved
in the protracted equipping of the laboratories. (ref. 75)
In October 1881 Waterhouse produced more
drawings, to obtain tenders for the main contract.
Apart from the dormers the chief architectural
change was the substitution of a more modest
doorway. Waterhouse now thought the main
contract should be obtainable for £66,000. (ref. 76) Of
the 16 builders invited to tender at least four were
provincial, and it was one of these, Henry Lovatt
of Wolverhampton, who was successful, in
December 1881, at £68,518. (ref. 77) Economical
changes (chiefly in cheaper internal finishings,
with plaster instead of some of the terra-cotta)
reduced this to about £65,000, and work on the
superstructure began in March 1882. (ref. 78) The
contract was made in May. By November 1883
the Institute, running short of funds, was asking
Waterhouse if the rate of progress could be slowed
down. He replied: 'It is somewhat unfortunate
that Mr. Lovatt is about the first contractor I
ever met with who seems likely to have his work
properly finished before the appointed time,
whilst this work is the only one I have been
engaged upon in which the Committee have
requested it to be delayed! (ref. 79)
On 25 June 1884 the building, not yet finished
or fitted for use, was formally opened by the Prince
of Wales, President of the Institute. He spoke of
the disproportionate attention hitherto given in
national education to 'literary training' compared
with 'scientific instruction'. Like Lord Selborne
he saw the Institute's main role as teachertraining. (ref. 80)
The Times reported that the full cost
was now expected to be £100,000. (ref. 81)
The exterior was in Berkshire red brick and
red terra-cotta, the latter provided by Gibbs and
Canning of Tarn worth, Staffordshire—apparently
with less interruption than in the supply for the
Natural History Museum. Virtually the only
ornamental accents were the coats of arms,
chiefly of manufacturing towns, which were
evidently substituted for those of the contributing
Livery Companies for 'diplomatic' reasons. These
were designed and supplied for £923 by James
Gamble, formerly of the Science and Art
Department, whose preference for Messrs.
Doulton as manufacturers was overruled by the
architect (Plate 67d). (ref. 82) (Gamble, in straitened
circumstances since Henry Scott's discontinuance
of his work for the Department, had been employed
by Waterhouse on the recommendation
of his chief patron, Sir Henry Cole—'His work
would suit any style, Mediaeval or Renaissance'. (ref. 83) )
Inside, the terra-cotta of the principal staircase
(Plate 67b) was Burmantoft's. The internal
woodwork was generally painted deal: (ref. 84) in the
Council Chamber the carving of the coats of
arms in oak was by Farmer and Brindley. (ref. 85) The
detailing and equipment of the interior, down to
the laboratory stools, is shown with great precision
in Waterhouse's drawings. (ref. 86)
The ironwork was provided by W. H. Lindsay
and Company. The clerk of works was T.
Streeter. (ref. 84)
This sober building (Plate 67c), whose only
external oddity was the traceried, window-like
openings between the linked chimney-stacks, was
respectfully received. When the elevation had
been exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1881
the Companion to the British Almanac thought it
important, simple, and perhaps rather heavy. The
finished structure had, it thought, like all Waterhouse's
work, 'the general character... of
common sense and good building, not excluding
picturesque effect'. (ref. 87) In 1884 H. H. Statham
dwelt upon it in a review of English architecture
in The Builder, finding its 'common-sense and
propriety' a more admirable type of eclecticism
than the fashionable 'Queen Anne' of Norman
Shaw: it was an exemplar for English architecture
'in its every-day aspect'. (ref. 88)
(fn. d) The British Architect
praised Waterhouse's grasp of practicalities in the
'admirable internal arrangements' of the building. (ref. 89)
Symmetrically disposed, a central entrance
led to a long corridor running transversely and a
staircase compartment at the rear: the smaller
and moderate-sized apartments were ranged along
the forward side of the corridor, on the street
frontage, while the larger apartments were placed
behind. Conditioned partly by the rather narrow
site, his plan evidently became influential on
Aston Webb's science buildings nearby (fig. 40
and figs. 41, 42 on pages 242, 244).
At the time of the formal opening it was still
proposed that the courses should include applied
art (and architecture), and the main room on the
second floor was 'intended for an Art Museum'. (ref. 90)
These studies were, however, already postponed, (ref. 91)
and, despite an offer by Banister Fletcher to
found a chair of architecture in 1888, (ref. 92) were
never reinstated.
Building work under the main contract
evidently continued into 1885. (ref. 93) When the final
account, including the foundations but not the
cost of fittings or Waterhouse's commission, was
made in that year it totalled £73,356. (ref. 94) The cost
of fittings had been estimated at £17,195 in
1883. (ref. 95) Partly because of attempted economies,
their provision was very slow, and it was summer
1885 before the building was used. (ref. 96) The final
total cost was stated as £100,000 in 1889. (ref. 97)
Already in 1885 the institution was, as
Donnelly, the secretary of the Science and Art
Department, told Huxley, in 'a bad way'. (ref. 98) Both
prospective students and firm support from the
City were wanting. Donnelly admitted to
ambitions to take it over, but this ignored the
aversion to South Kensington that caused some of
the City's coolness towards its new institution. (ref. 99)
These early years were very difficult, but in 1899
it was constituted a 'school' of the University of
London in the faculty of engineering, and in
1907 the City and Guilds College of the new
Imperial College of Science and Technology. (ref. 100)
Henceforward its fortunes prospered with those of
Imperial College, although as a school of engineering
only, not of wider applied sciences.
By 1901 the problem of overcrowding had caused
it to hire accommodation in the new school of
needlework next door, (ref. 101) and in 1909 the building
of the large northern Goldsmiths' Extension
(paid for by that Company) was initiated in
conjunction with a. new building for the Royal
School of Mines (see page 245). The Waterhouse
building was demolished in 1962 in the course of
the rebuilding of Imperial College.
Figure 41:
Royal College of Science, ground-floor plan in 1907
1 Apparatus Room
2 Tutorial and Physical Chemistry Lecture Theatre
3 Chemical Library of Reference
4 Research Laboratory
5 Astrophysics Lecture Room
6 Dark Room
7 Professor's Room
8 Professor's Laboratory
9 Upper Part of Main Chemical Laboratory
10 Upper Part of Chemisery Lecture Theatre
11 Upper Part of Physics Lecture Theatre
12 Diagram Room
13 Senior Physics Laboratory
14 Staff Common Room
15 Cloaks
16 Lavatory
In 1907 the most recently built premises (now
being demolished) were those into which the
chemistry and physics departments of the Royal
College of Science were then about to move from
the Huxley Building.
Royal College of Science
(Chemistry and Physics Building),
Imperial Institute Road
In 1890 the Government had bought from the
1851 Exhibition Commissioners a 4½acre site on
the south side of Imperial Institute' Road. The
primary object of advocates of this acquisition had
been the establishment of a science museum. (ref. 102)
The Normal School of Science in Exhibition
Road (in that year created the Royal College of
Science) had, however, become very crowded in
its premises (now the Huxley Building); the
science museum had itself been visualized chiefly
as an aid to science teaching, and it was as a
site for new buildings for the College that the
ground was first used. There was, nevertheless,
ten years delay, during which departments of
the College were moved into makeshift accommodation
in the old buildings surrounding the
Horticultural Society's garden and elsewhere.
(For the Royal College of Science building see
Plate 73c, d; plans c, d between pages 54—5, and
fig. 41.)
Soon after the purchase, the College staff was
asked to state its requirements and in the summer
of 1890 asked for the physics, chemistry and
astronomy departments to be housed on the new
site. In the following year Sir A. Rücker and
T. Thorpe, the professors of physics and chemistry,
viewed the design and equipment of
continental laboratories, and in November 1891
plans of the required accommodation were forwarded
to the Office of Works in anticipation of its
provision at the same time as the new buildings of
the South Kensington Museum east of Exhibition
Road. (ref. 103) It was envisaged that the new building
would abut on the west side of that road and on
Imperial Institute Road, where the College and
the Science Museum would share most of the
south side. A scheme to place the Tate Gallery
here instead caused alarm to scientists (ref. 104) and
although this was prevented work on the College
was postponed. (ref. 96) In about 1894 Sir John Taylor,
surveyor of the Office of Works, had plans
prepared for the Science and Art Department,
which scientists liked for their suitability, (ref. 105) but
when in 1897 the Government took the matter
up again, in conjunction with the execution of
(Sir) Aston Webb's South Kensington Museum
plans, it was initially for a relatively confined site
adjacent to the old building east of Exhibition
Road. The protests of scientists and of friends
of the art museum prevailed (one benevolent
influence being the Prince of Wales), (ref. 106) and by
the latter part of 1898 Aston Webb was preparing
(at the same time as his South Kensington
Museum designs) sketch-plans for the College on
the Imperial Institute Road site. (ref. 107) The College
had fared rather better than the Science Museum,
and was now given the principal site occupying
most of the south side. Of £800,000 voted
by Parliament for the science and art buildings
the new College buildings were to take
£200,000. (ref. 108)
The plans were approved in the following year,
work began in 1900 and was finished in 1905–6.
The building was first used in the session of
1906–7. (ref. 96)
(fn. e)
Described in The Building News in 1900 as a
'great work', on the strength of Webb's Academy
drawings, (ref. 116) the building (Plate 73c, d) was well
received by the press. It had the great disadvantage
for a monumental structure of a north aspect, and
did not enjoy the reclame of a royal opening, or
the public interest of the new South Kensington
Museum, but two aspects of Webb's work in
particular were praised. One was the simple
effective planning, associated with careful provision
before building began for an appropriate
arrangement and equipment of the rooms (fig. 41).
Indeed, the professor of physics told a Departmental
Committee in 1904 that he thought the
buildings 'were rather intended to serve as a
model of what laboratories should be to the schools
throughout the country, and for that reason no
doubt a good deal of money has been spent on
making them monuments of fine work'. (ref. 117) The
chemistry department was in the east wing where
the disposition of the three divisions of general and
analytical, physical, and organic chemistry,
originally planned by Professor Thorpe before
1894, was revised for the actual site by Professor
Tilden. The requirements of the physics department
in the west wing, arranged by Professor
Rücker and his successor Professor Callendar,
probably involved more architectural considerations,
to prevent vibration or magnetic interference.
Metal was excluded so far as possible from
the structure of the laboratory block at the rear,
which was only lightly linked to the front building
and surrounded by a peat-filled trench. The
benches had foundations independent of the floor,
which itself was cushioned on a bed of coke. (ref. 118) A
special system of distributing electric current was
devised by G. A. Steinthal of Bradford and
Professor Callendar. (ref. 96) On a similarly wide and
shallow site Webb kept the plan of his building
very close to Waterhouse's scheme for the City
and Guilds College. (ref. 119)
The main apartment over the entrance, on the
first and second floors, was appropriated, not to
the College, but to a science museum library.
The second aspect of Webb's building to be
much applauded was its relationship to the Imperial
Institute opposite. This rather modest
advance upon the individualism of the Victorian
architect was hailed as 'a new departure among
us'. Webb's early plans, in 1899, had in fact
promised a scenic treatment of Imperial Institute
Road, with screens of entrance arches and a
sculptural feature at the centre of a circular place
between the two buildings. (As shown in a published
drawing the monument in the place looks
like the Memorial to the 1851 Exhibition, which
it was perhaps proposed to utilize.) All that was
done in the end was to make the front of Webb's
building respond in plan to that of the Imperial
Institute, and the pavilion at each extremity,
'with Mr. Collcutt's concurrence', echo the
design of those opposite: the Architectural
Association found the differences of detail in the
pavilions interesting. Webb made no attempt to
rival Collcutt's rich, small-scaled ornamentation
but his 'large, quiet' design, realized in Fareham
red brick and Whitbed Portland stone, was
thought to hold its own in 'dignity and power'. (ref. 120)
The contractors were Leslie and Company of
Kensington, and Webb's clerk of works J. G.
Peacock. The stone carving was by W. S. Frith,
the plasterwork by S. Spenser and the specially
designed internal and external light fittings by the
Bromsgrove Guild. (ref. 121) Glazed white brick was
used extensively in the interior. The final cost
reached about £304,000, plus some £25,600 for
fittings. (ref. 122)
As part of the reconstruction of Imperial
College the west wing was demolished in 1961–2.
The centre and east wing were in course of
demolition in 1973–4.
Figure 42:
Royal School of Mines, ground-floor plan in 1912
1 Entrance Hall
2 Ore Floor
3 Stamping Mills
4 Cyanide Plant
5 Bessemer Laboratory
6 Stores
7 Balance Room
8 Main Assay Laboratory
9 Metallurgy
10 Professor's Laboratory
11 Classroom
12 Lecture Theatre
13 Preparation and Diagram
14 Micrography
15 Specialized Assay
Royal School of Mines and
City and Guilds College,
Goldsmiths' Extension, Prince
Consort Road
The Royal School of Mines was thus the part of
Imperial College most urgently in want of new
accommodation in 1907. (For this building see
Plate 74a; plans c, d between pages 54–5, and
fig. 42.) At the same time the need for instruction
in mining and metallurgy was, with engineering,
that most compellingly felt by the founders of the
college. (By 1912, the college owned a mine in
Cornwall. (ref. 123) ) As the mining industrialist Sir
Julius Wernher told a meeting at Lord Rosebery's
in 1902 'the men he and others wanted were not
to be found in England, and the only alternative
to the employment of Germans was the foundation
of a technological department of the [London]
University'. (ref. 124) The Departmental Committee of
1904—6 had stressed that 'as London is the
financial centre of many great engineering,
mining and metallurgical industries in the
Colonies, it is ... the best site for a more highly
developed School of Mines which shall provide
for the needs of the Empire'. (ref. 125) In July 1908
Imperial College asked Sir Aston Webb to act as
its architect, (ref. 96) and his building in Imperial
Institute Road was thus very shortly followed by a
comparable structure in Prince Consort Road
that was, however, the first to be erected for
Imperial College as such. In the formality of its
architecture it seems to express something of the
concentrated drive at the level of governmental
strategy that lay behind the new foundation.
In July 1909 King Edward VII laid the
foundation stone for the Royal School of Mines
and the extension (for engineering) of the City
and Guilds College. (ref. 126)
(fn. f) The estimated cost was
£120,000 for the Royal School of Mines (to
which the Bessemer Memorial Committee made
a large donation in the form of the Bessemer
laboratory) and £80,000 for the extension of the
City and Guilds College (to which the Goldsmiths'
Company gave £50,000, later increased
by £37,000 to cover the whole final cost). The
work, executed by Messrs. Killby and Gayford
and Messrs. Dove Brothers, began in 1910. The
clerk of works was H. W. G. Tanner. The Royal
School of Mines and Bessemer laboratory were
completed by 1913 and the Goldsmiths' Extension
of the City and Guilds College by 1915. The
Extension, after requisitioning by the Government,
was only fully occupied by Imperial
College in 1926. (ref. 128)
An article in The Builder in 1911 noted that
Webb had planned his fronts in bays of equal
width, with movable internal partitions: 'this
principle of units has affected the external elevation,
which is kept simple, and will depend for its
effect on the repetition of features and continuous
horizontal cornice'. (ref. 129) The result was
approved by The Building News (Plate 74a). (ref. 130)
The sculptured figures flanking the entrance in
Prince Consort Road, by P. R. Montford, were
exhibited, as models, at the Royal Academy in
1916, and placed in position in 1920. (ref. 96)
In his arrangement of the Royal School of
Mines Webb again followed broadly Waterhouse's
scheme at the old City and Guilds
College (fig. 40). (ref. 131) In the internal planning of
the Goldsmiths' Extension he was guided by
Professors Dalby, Unwin and Coker of that
College.
The Bessemer laboratory was rebuilt by Killby
and Gayford in 1951–3. An extra storey was
added to the Goldsmiths' Extension, for geochemistry
and geophysics, in 1954–5. (ref. 96)
Other buildings of Imperial College
For fifty years the buildings raised by Imperial
College itself were confined to Prince Consort
Road. On its north side, west of the Albert Hall
approach, Sir Aston Webb designed at about the
same time as the Royal School of Mines but in a
restrained Tudor domestic style the northern
range of an intended quadrangle, to serve as the
Students' Union. It was built in 1910–11 by
F. and F. H. Higgs at a total cost of just over
£16,000. (ref. 132) In 1955–7 it was enlarged and altered
by the architects Norman and Dawbarn
in consultation with Sir Hubert Worthington.
The prospective cost of this in 1954 had been
£198,883. (ref. 133) For the east side of the quadrangle
Webb designed a range to accommodate botany
and plant pathology and physiology. This was in a
similar style except that, he said, 'the maximum
of glass has been given to all rooms'. It was built
in 1912–14 by Dove Brothers at a total cost of
£16,698. (ref. 96) The west side consists of a range for
biochemistry built in 1921–3 at a cost of £48,731,
and a hostel at its north end built in 1925–6 to a
contract price of £16,304. Both were built by
Foster and Dicksee to Webb's design. (ref. 134) In 1927
a south side to the quadrangle, fronting on Prince
Consort Road, was designed by Webb (who died
in 1930). A contract was concluded, with John
Knox and Dyke, however, only in 1929, by
which time the design was in the hands of Aston
Webb and Son, that is, in effect, of Maurice
Webb. As ground landlords the 1851 Exhibition
Commissioners submitted it for approval to Sir
Reginald Blomfield, but acknowledged that they
had no effective control. Blomfield's only comment
was that the proportions of the Ionic
pilasters on the exterior were unusually tall. This
range, known as the Beit Building, was constructed
in 1930–1 at a cost of £87,946 (see
plans c, d between pages 54–5). (ref. 135)
Third only to mining-and-metallurgy and
engineering in the new college's priority of
subjects was chemical technology. This was sited
south of Prince Consort Road, west of the Royal
College of Music. In 1912 Sir Aston Webb made
plans for a building with a stone front on the
general pattern of the Royal School of Mines.
Instead, a cheap and bare structure set back from
the street frontage was erected in 1913–14 by
Killby and Gayford for £10,080. Despite the
college's doubt whether Webb would want to be
associated with it, he provided the design. He
added two storeys for chemical engineering in
1920–2, and the building was extended again by
Sir Hubert Worthington in 1948–9. (ref. 136)
In 1929 Sir Henry Tizard became Rector and
during the 1930's made some headway with a
plan foreshadowing post-1953 developments. By
this the college would have expanded southward
from Prince Consort Road and the area between
that road and Imperial Institute Road (the
'island site') would have been limited to academic
uses. The area south of the latter road would,
however, have been reserved for museums and
the Royal College of Science site would have
been given up, as would the Huxley Building.
In 1936 Tizard contested an abortive plan to
place the Royal College of Art and a museum of
ethnology on the island site and obtained some
official concurrence in his scheme. This was
worked out for Tizard in architectural terms by
Sir Hubert Worthington in 1936–7—evidently
on a strong east-west axis with a ceremonial
entrance in Queen's Gate (on the site of Nos.
177–179). The only actual progress before war
intervened, however, was an arrangement for
the college to take over the Royal School of
Needlework building. (ref. 137)
In 1949 Worthington designed a new brick
and stone building for both chemical technology
and aeronautics west of the Royal College of
Music on the Prince Consort Road frontage, to
which it would have presented two gate-towers.
The foundations were begun by Higgs and Hill
in 1951 but progress with the framework of the
superstructure was halted throughout 1952 for
want of an allocation of steel. (ref. 138)
Then in 1953 this difficulty was solved by an
event which in its larger consequences has brought
about the as-yet uncompleted transformation of
the college. This was the Government's decision
that in 'a development of towering magnitude'
(as the Financial Secretary to the Treasury called
it) the main feature of its policy for the advancement
of technical and scientific education at
university level should be a great and immediate
expansion of Imperial College. Within ten years
the number of students was almost doubled, to
nearly 3,000. The expansion was intended to be
greater in the engineering departments than in
others, and greater among post-graduates than
among the more junior students. (ref. 139) By 1964, after
the Robbins Report on Higher Education, the
total number of students aimed at was 4,700. (ref. 140)
The problem of physical expansion was somewhat
eased by the high priority that was generally given
to the work by the Government, although progress
has not been unaffected by financial
stringency. On the other hand it was made more
difficult by the 'sad jumble' of the island site,
which, as the Annual Report of the college said
in 1955–6, 'rather resembles the continent of
Africa, in that we are tolerably familiar with the
margin or littoral region, but some of the interior
is very dark indeed.'
By the autumn of 1953 the college had
approved the results of an appraisal of the site by
its architects. (ref. 141) These were Messrs. Norman and
Dawbarn, who were henceforward responsible
for development of the island site with Sir Hubert
Worthington (died 1963) and Sir William (later
Lord) Holford acting as consultants. (ref. 142)
Norman and Dawbarn redesigned the superstructure
of the interrupted chemical technologyaeronautics
building, erected in 1954–7 by John
Jarvis and Sons. Called the Roderick Hill
Building, its entrance hall contains 'a decorative
wall made up of the College arms in bone china',
designed by Professor R. W. Baker of the Royal
College of Art and executed by W. J. Copeland
and Sons of Stoke-on-Trent (ref. 143) —a use of ceramic
ware reminiscent of old South Kensington.
Early in 1956 the overall scheme of Norman
and Dawbarn was made public. More symmetrically
planned than it afterwards became, the
layout attracted some criticism on the grounds
that it tended to overbuild the site, and aroused a
public agitation, as well as strong doubts in the
Royal Fine Arts Commission, by its complete
elimination of the Imperial Institute building. (fn. g)
The college itself was unhappy at its unusually low
proportion of resident students, and during 1956
some alleviation of all these matters of concern
was contrived, when the greater part of Princes
Gardens, east of Exhibition Road, was acquired
for residential hostels and other uses. (ref. 144) A revised
scheme approved by the London County Council
and the Royal Fine Arts Commission in 1958
allowed a lower density of development on the
island site and the retention of the Imperial
Institute's tower (Plate 76 b; plan d between
pages 54–5). (ref. 145)
The aim in designing at least the earlier of the
post-1953 buildings on the island site was expressed
in the college's Annual Report of 1955–6.
Necessarily Very large functional buildings', they
would 'not be "modern" in the vulgar sense that
they will astonish our neighbours and clash with
the pleasant legacies of the past, but they will be
contemporary in that they will perform, without
fuss or exaggeration, but we hope not without
elegance, a complicated and necessary task of our
times'. (ref. 146)
The dates of some of the island-site buildings
are: Mechanical Engineering 1957–65; Physics
1957–9; (fn. h) Electrical and Civil Engineering
1960–63; Aeronautics and Chemical Technology
extension 1964–6; College Block, Archives
department, Great Hall and libraries, 1966–9;
Mathematics begun 1971. It is intended that the
Physics and Mathematics buildings shall be named
the Huxley Building when the department of
mathematics moves out of the present Huxley
Building in Exhibition Road.
For the buildings in Princes Gardens (outside
the area generally included in this volume)
Richard Sheppard and Partners were appointed
architects in 1956. Weeks Hall was built on the
north side in 1957–9, then halls of residence on
the south side in 1960–3, followed by those on
the east side and the sports centre on the north
side in 1966–8. (ref. 148)
In 1961 the college decided to demolish Aston
Webb's Royal College of Science building, and
replace it with new buildings for Biochemistry
and Chemistry designed by Architects Copartnership.
Webb's west wing was therefore demolished
and the Biochemistry building erected on the
westernmost part of its site in 1962–5. Financial
restrictions by the Government delayed progress,
however, and the first section of the Chemistry
building was not erected until 1968–70 (Plate
76a), while in 1973–4 the intended site of the
remainder of it was still occupied by the centre
and eastern wing of Aston Webb's building in
course of demolition.