10 
HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 
Purchase of 
land at South 
Kensington. 
Competitive 
designs. 
A 
Captain 
Fowke's plan. 
Their recommendation was that the whole of the Natural 
History Collections should be simultaneously removed, as well 
as those of Ethnography. Accordingly a Bill was brought 
in by the Government early in the Session of 1862 to enable 
the Trustees to effect this removal ; but it was rejected on the 
ground of the great outlay required for the erection of the pro- 
posed new building at South Kensington. 
In the Session of 1863 the Government renewed their efforts 
to cope with the Museum difficulty, and after failing to induce 
the House of Commons to sanction the purchase of the entire 
Exhibition Buildings at South Kensington, with a view to appro- 
priating a portion of them to the purpose of a Museum of 
Natural History, succeeded in obtaining a vote for the purchase 
of the requisite number of acres from the exhibition ground at 
the price of £10,000 per acre. The prospect of the immediate 
erection of the desired building seemed now sufficiently pro- 
mising ; but nearly twenty years were to elapse before its 
complete realisation. Plans of the proposed building had 
already been prepared for Government. In September, 1862, 
Mr. Hunt, of the Office of Works, was instructed to work out 
the design of a building suggested by Professor Owen, and this 
was submitted to the House of Commons in June, 1863. 
The proposed building was to have covered about four acres of 
land ; would have consisted of a vaulted basement, two storeys 
above the roadway for the exhibition of the collections, with an 
attic over a part of the centre for libraries and professors' 
rooms, and would have included a theatre, 100 feet in diameter, 
for lectures. The site was to be on the east side of Queen's 
Gate, and the cost was estimated at £350,000. 
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 site 
of the International Exhibition at South Kensington, the plan 
prepared by Mr. Hunt in September, 18^, from Professor Owen's 
suggestions, being proposed as a model in respect to dimensions 
and internal arrangement. 
The plans of the various competitors were submitted to Her 
Majesty's Commissioners of Works, who awarded prizes to three 
of the number, giving precedence to that of Captain Francis 
