Aspic or celebration?
How did the cabinets of curiosities brought back from the voyages of discovery of the 16th and 17th centuries lead to the rise of museums?
This nation's saving place
The British Museum has always maintained a worldwide perspective and has brought understanding and wonder to the public for the past 250 years.
Related programme
The story of the British Museum.
In the beginning
The British Museum was founded on 7th June 1753 when The British Museum Act received the Royal Assent. This act provided for a public lottery to be held to raise funds for the acquisition of the Sir Hans Sloane collection of natural history items, books, manuscripts and antiquities as well as a repository to house them. Also included in this arrangement was the purchase of the Harley Collection of manuscripts and the housing of the Cottonian collection of books, manuscripts etc, which had been bequeathed to the nation in 1700.
In 1754 the Trustees purchased Montagu House, a 17th century mansion in Bloomsbury, to house the collections and in 1756 appointed the Museum's first staff under a Principal Librarian, Gowin Knight. The Museum opened to the public on 15th January 1759.
Acquisitions for the Museum continued to grow and in 1757, King George II donated the Royal Library and with it the privilege of copyright deposit. The increasing importance of the expanding antiquities collections was recognised in 1807 by the establishment of a separate Antiquities Department and in 1808 by the opening of the Townley Gallery to house Classical and Egyptian material. The Department of Prints and Drawings was created in 1836.
Faced with ever expanding collections and the growing disrepair of Montagu House, the Trustees decided to build a completely new Museum. This operation, largely directed by the architect Robert Smirke, took 30 years and cost £800,000. The first part of the new building was the King's Library, completed in 1827. Montagu House was demolished in 1852. The round Reading Room, not part of the original plan, was completed by Robert Smirke's brother, Sydney, in 1857.
In 1860, the Department of Antiquities split in to three; Greek and Roman Antiquities, Coins and Medals and Oriental Antiquities, which curiously included British and Medieval European material. The continuing growth of the collections again called for drastic action and, in the 1880s, the Natural History collections were moved to South Kensington. The White Wing was built in 1884 and the King Edward VII galleries opened in 1914.
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Content last updated: 25/07/2005
