Royal College of Science

Cash-strapped from the start as a private institution, in 1853 it was merged in with the School of Mines, founded in 1851 in Jermyn Street, and placed under the newly created British government Science and Art Department, although it continued to retain its own premises and substantially its own identity.

In 1872-3 the College of Chemistry moved into a new building at South Kensington (now the Henry Cole wing of the Victoria and Albert museum), along with the physics and biology classes previously taught at the School of Mines.

[1] The building, built on land acquired for "educational purposes" by the commissioners of the Great Exhibition of 1851, and next to another of Science and Art Department's projects the South Kensington Museum (later the V&A), had originally been intended to be a new school of naval architecture.

In the years following the establishment of the Normal School of Science in 1881, space became pressing as the college expanded, so work began in 1900 on new premises.

In 1906 the RCS moved into an imposing new building designed by Sir Aston Webb, which was built in a Classical style and had distinctive brick courses.