CHAPTER XX - Geological Museum
The smallest of the public museums at
South Kensington was built in 1929–33,
under the auspices of the Department of
Scientific and Industrial Research, to house the
Museum of Practical Geology and the offices of
the Geological Survey on their removal from
Jermyn Street. In coming to South Kensington
they were following the Royal School of Mines
which had already (though slowly and hesitantly)
moved thither. (fn. a) The union of the Museum's
collection with part of the Natural History
Museum had been suggested to the Royal Commission
on Scientific Instruction in the 1870's. (ref. 1)
Its conjunction with the other science collections
at South Kensington was recommended in 1898
by a Select Committee of the House of Commons:
this noted that the disposal of the Crown site in
Jermyn Street would pay for a 'fine building' at
South Kensington, (ref. 2) and in 1904 applicants for a
lease of that site, the catering firm J. Lyons and
Company, offered to spend £50,000 on a new
museum elsewhere but the offer was refused. (ref. 3) The
long travail of removal really began with the
recommendations of the Departmental Committee
of the Board of Education under Sir Hugh
Bell in 1910–12. This pointed to the present site
for a new museum which, placed between the
proposed Science Museum and the palaeontological
and mineralogical wing of the Natural
History Museum, would contribute to an unrivalled
collection of geological material variously
displayed (plans c, d between pages 54–5). The
British Museum consented to the museum's
location on part of the site hitherto reserved for
the expansion of the Natural History Museum,
and in 1911–12 a scheme was evolved by the
Office of Works for a building that would be
structurally part of an eastward extension of the
Natural History Museum, with the same floor
levels. It would also be united to the proposed
Science Museum by a bridge. (ref. 4)
This arrangement postulated interconnexion
between the three museums. The 1851 Exhibition
Commissioners, the former landlords, with whom
the Government had covenanted to use the land
for the purposes of science or art, were henceforward
strong advocates of this, (ref. 5) and generally
the staffs of the Science and Geological Museums
remained favourable.
The plans of 1911–13, prepared under Sir
Henry Tanner as Chief Architect of the Office
of Works, were for a terra-cotta building continuing
the style of the Natural History Museum,
and wholly different from the intended Science
Museum being planned by Tanner's assistant,
(Sir) Richard Allison. (ref. 6) The latter had succeeded
Tanner by 1914, however, and thereafter the
Geological Museum was destined (whether or
not as part of the Natural History Museum
extension) to be classical and stone-faced. (ref. 7)
It was 1923 before progress again seemed
practically possible, when the Department of
Scientific and Industrial Research, to which the
Museum and Geological Survey had been
transferred from the Board of Education in 1919,
extracted from the Treasury a statement that it
was 'not opposed in principle' to the removal. (ref. 8)
The very unsafe condition of the Jermyn Street
building was henceforward an added incentive to
action. In the following year Labour's Chancellor
of the Exchequer confirmed the Bell Committee's
choice of site, and a token sum was approved in
the Estimates towards the anticipated cost of
£226,000 plus £40,500 for furnishings and
fittings. (ref. 9) Plans were made, but in the summer of
1925 progress was stopped for a time when the
Conservative Government contemplated putting
the Museum into the easternmost part of the new
Science Museum instead. (ref. 10) The following year of
the General Strike was not auspicious for new
building projects, although Lord Balfour as Lord
President of the Council argued against excessive
economy in scientific research institutions at a
time of industrial depression, and included in this
the Museum and Survey, 'so intimately concerned
with the development of the coal-mining
industry'. (fn. b)
(ref. 11) By the end of 1926 plans evidently
approximating to those finally executed, and also to
the main gallery of the Science Museum, were in
existence. But in the face of reluctance at the
Treasury (which in 1927 demolished a longcherished
hope that the revenue from the valuable
Jermyn Street site could be applied towards the
new museum) plans for a two-storeyed brick
carcase to cost only some £150,000 were prepared
by Allison. (ref. 12) In July 1927, however, a Royal
Commission on the National Museums and
Galleries was appointed under Lord D'Abernon,
and in December the Conservative Government,
in which Balfour was still urging the Museum's
case, announced that it would implement as soon
as financially possible the Commission's preliminary
recommendation that the Bell Committee's
report should be acted upon. (ref. 13) A sub-committee
of the Royal Commission considered a cheaper
museum-plan but accepted the insistence of Sir
John Flett, the Director of the Geological
Museum, and his staff, that the excellent main
gallery of the Science Museum represented a
much more satisfactory arrangement than a
narrower, wholly side-lit, gallery. (ref. 14) In its Interim
Report of September 1928 the Royal Commission
advocated the full Science Museum-type
scheme. Over a basement storey, three storeys of
side-lit galleries would open into a top-lit well,
with reserved galleries over them. It noted that
the Office of Works thought a recent fall in
building prices made £220,000 the likely cost of
the building (less furnishings and fittings). It also
asserted the general proposition that the value of
the Jermyn Street site, however appropriated, was
in fact a substantial set-off against the real cost of
the move to the public. (ref. 15) A rearguard action by
the Treasury early in 1929 sought to reduce the
extent of the proposed building by the argument
that the Museum should be regarded as 'primarily
for study and research and only secondarily for
the delectation of the general public'. (ref. 16) But by
the end of the year the foundations were begun to
Allison's plans for the £220,000 building. (ref. 17)
The Summary of Progress of the Geological
Survey for 1929, published in 1930, announced
that the exterior would resemble that of the
Science Museum. It also announced that 'the
mineralogical and palaeontological galleries of
the British Museum [Natural History Museum]
and the mining, metallurgical and geophysical
galleries of the Science Museum will be in close
juxtaposition with the exhibits of stratigraphical
geology and economic geology in the Geological
Museum' and would be linked 'by means of
passages through which the public can travel from
one series of galleries to the other'. (ref. 18)
The steel framework (by Banister, Walton and
Company) was completed by the beginning of
1931 and the work was half-finished by the main
contractors, Galbraith Brothers, at the end of the
year. (ref. 19) It was early in 1932 before the Museum
authorities seem to have realized that although
there was a bridge to the Science Museum no
connexion with the Natural History Museum was
being provided. (ref. 20) The eastern extension of the
latter, which would have abutted on the eastern
end of the Geological Museum's south side, had
been abandoned, and although the two museums
were still juxtaposed at the new museum's west
end the Office of Works could only suggest, reluctantly, an improvised bridge to join them. This
was given up when it was found that the British
Museum (Natural History Museum) authorities
did not accept the principle of public interconnexion,
although its abandonment was regretted
in the Geological Museum. ('We can do nothing.
We cannot knock a hole in the wall of the British
Museum'.) Even structural provision for mutual
access of the museum staffs was by then found
impracticable. (ref. 21)
(fn. c)
The building was completed in 1933, the east
end and front being the last part to be finished. (ref. 23)
Occupation by the Museum and Survey was
delayed by the use of the building to house the
world monetary conference in the summer of that
year, but the removal from Jermyn Street was
effected in 1934. (ref. 24)
New principles of display were adopted. The
stratigraphical series of fossils and rocks was
largely withdrawn to the study collection. Far
fewer specimens were shown than in Jermyn
Street, and more use was made of illustrative and
explanatory material. Wall surfaces had been
reduced to a minimum to give the greatest possible
natural light and the vertical wall-displays of the
old museum were replaced by horizontal cases.
These were designed by H. B. Allum and
C. E. W. Buck of the Office of Works, and
special gemstone cases by Gerald Brown. (ref. 25)
The Museum was opened by the Duke of
York (later King George VI) in July 1935.
Allison had retired in the previous year and the
execution of the work had been in the hands of
J. H. Markham. (ref. 26) The interior closely followed
Allison's Science Museum (where Markham had
superintended much of the work) but at the
opening Markham was said to be the architect.
This presumably referred chiefly to the elevation
(Plate 75c), which the First Commissioner of
Works thought 'expressed in a fitting manner the
importance of the Museum'. (ref. 27)
The materials were chiefly 'dark cherry red'
Bracknell bricks and the 'best brown' Portland
stone (Whitbed): the roof-slates were green
Tilberthwaite. (ref. 28)
The First Commissioner stated the cost at
about £220,000 (to which the fittings added
another £25,000). He observed that the rent from
the Jermyn Street site (£11,000 per annum (ref. 29) )
exceeded the interest on this capital sum. The
finances at least permitted some show of opulence
in the ironwork near the entrance, and in the
decorative British 'marbles' (mainly from Devon,
Derbyshire, Purbeck and Connemara) in the
entrance hall and staircases.
In 1973 the south side of the museum was
joined to the new extension of the Natural History
Museum then under construction (see page 216
and plan d between pages 54–5).