RICHARD JEFFERIES contrasted the pigeons outside the British Museum (To them the building is merely a rock, pierced with convenient caverns') with the humans vainly seeking enlightenment inside, in an article first published in the Pall Mall Gazette and subsequently reprinted in his The Life of the Fields (1884). Jefferies admitted he felt 'nearer knowledge' standing beneath its portico and enjoying the 'southern blue' of the sky than when turning a book's pages in its former Reading Room. Many of us may have felt a similar feeling of a great weight slipping from our shoulders on departure from this august, but exhausting, place.
The British Museum was the world's first public museum and the first stone of the present building was laid 200 years ago this year. The museum's origins pre-dated that, however, arising out of the library, and botany and natural history specimens, of Sir Hans Sloane, purchased for the nation on his death in 1753 and subsequently augmented with manuscripts and antiquities from other collectors. These were presented in the specially acquired Montagu House, built by Robert Hooke for the 1st Duke of Montagu in the 1670s.
Old paintings show it to have been a large, red-brick building reminiscent of Kensington Palace, with a leafy outlook unimaginable now. It opened as the British Museum in 1759, but, by the early 19th century, it was plain the collection was outgrowing the premises. When the Elgin Marbles arrived in 1816, they were initially housed in a temporarily erected shed.
In 1820, Sir Robert Smirke (1780-1867) was commissioned to begin preparations for the construction of a new building on the same site. The work was undertaken in stages, with parts of the old house only demolished as sections of the new building went up in its place.
This story is from the February 15, 2023 edition of Country Life UK.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the February 15, 2023 edition of Country Life UK.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.