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BULLETIN OF THE LIVERPOOL MUSEUMS. 
The Technical Instruction Sub-Committee * (also a section of the same 
General Committee) then also found itself in the same position in regard to a 
central school to accommodate the more advanced classes, which were and 
are now being held in widely separated parts of the City, in buildings most 
of them ill adapted for teaching purposes. 
A special Sub-Committee was therefore constituted in December, 1894, 
empowered to take immediate steps for the extension of the Museums, and 
for providing suitable accommodation for the Liverpool School of Science, 
Technology, and Art. The credit of overcoming the difficulties which beset 
the initiation of so large a scheme, and of arranging the preliminaries, is 
chiefly due to Sir William Forwood. Mr. Austin Taylor, M.A., the first 
Chairman of the Sub-Committee, devoted much time to the initial stages of 
the project, while his successor, Mr. Maxwell Hyslop Maxwell, Jr., has most 
ably and ardently carried forward the scheme to its present advanced stage. 
The present Museum Buildings stand on a plateau sloping abruptly 
towards the west. An inspection of the ground and an exploration of the 
underlying strata revealed the gratifying fact that the rock-foundation on 
which the present Museums rest extended westwards further than was 
supposed, and that by excavating the slope, consisting of Permian rock, 
down to the level of Byrom Street, sufficient accommodation, three storeys 
in height, could be provided for the Technical Schools, while the Museum 
Galleries could be carried forward, on their present level, over the schools. 
The Technical Schools would thus be distinct and entirely isolated, and have 
their own entrance in Byrom Street. 
This being so, designs with estimates for a building—whose requirements 
were sketched out by the Director of Technical Instruction and the Director 
of Museums respectively—were invited from a selected list of architects of 
eminence in England. In the summer of 1896 the designs of Edward 
William Mountford, Esq., F.R.I.B.A., of London, were awarded the first 
premium. The handsome and stately building so designed, which is repre- 
sented on the plate facing page 71, will be 90 feet above the level of Byrom 
Street, and measuring from north to south 162 feet, and from east to west 190 
feet, occupying an area of 27,000 square feet. The galleries of the Museum 
will run in continuity with those in the existing building, and will be un- 
divided in any part of their course by walls or partitions. They will be of 
horse-shoe shape, and 420 feet in length, 33 feet in breadth ; the lower— 
to contain the Invertebrates—19 feet in height, while the upper—for the 
Vertebrates—-will be 27 feet. The lower floors will be lighted from the side, 
and the upper from the roof. New and well-appointed laboratories—which, 
when the first building was erected, had been entirely overlooked, or, at that 
date, considered quite unnecessary adjuncts to a museum—for the Director 
and his assistants, are also to be provided, as well as new administrative 
offices. 
The new buildings will be of brick, faced with Stancliffe Stone from the 
quarries at Darley Dale, in Derbyshire, the same which furnished the material 
of which St. George’s Hall is built. They will be the largest built by the 
Corporation of Liverpool for fifty years, and the largest since the erection 
of St. George’s Hall, and, next to it, the largest building in the city. The 
front to Byrom Street rises from the very edge of the original “ Pool,” and is 
close to the site where the old bridge connected Liverpool with the heath. 
The ventilation and heating of the buildings will be carried out by Mr. 
Key, of Glasgow, on a system which provides upwards of four miles of 
three-inch pipes, discharging into every room purified and warmed air to the 
amount of 8,000,000 cubic feet per hour. The stairs are of stone, the floors 

_ *The Technical Instruction Sub-Committee has since been constituted a Standing 
Committee of the Council, under the chairmanship of Mr. W. E. Willink, M.A. 
