Sketchpedition Through Time and Relative Dimensions 6) Imperial Institute

My TARDIS of the imagination still stubbornly refuses to leave London and makes a short hop of a couple of miles and about fifty years back into the past to the next place I’d like to sketch.

This is the Imperial Institute in South Kensington. It was opened in 1893 by Queen Victoria. The institute was a direct product of Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887, and was designed to showcase industrial and commercial products and developments of countries which were part of the British Empire.

I have to be honest, I tend to think that empires are not, by and large, a good thing for the majority of their peoples, and so I will be totally honest and say it’s the building that I’m interested in, and not the purpose or the contents. I know that some people do get quite upset about this but my personal feeling is that Brits (like me) need to be able to discuss our Imperial past honestly and not try to bury it all under the carpet with the argument that it all happened a long time ago. Yes, let’s be proud of what’s worth being proud of, but let’s be honest and critical where it’s deserved too.

From the start of the 20^th century this building was associated with the University of London, which took over approximately half of the building’s space. That interests me since I’m an alumnus of London University, although Goldsmith’s rather than Imperial College. The purposes of the Institute changed and developed, but with the Commonwealth Act of 1958 the Imperial Institute became the Commonwealth Institute and it was decided that a new permanent home would be built. The only part of the building saved from demolition was the Queen’s Tower – seen on the left hand side of my sketch, while everything else was demolished to make way for the expansion of Imperial College – at the time part of London University, but now independent. The preservation of the tower came about through pressure from the Royal Fine Arts Commission and the poet John Betjeman.

This particular part of London, South Kensington isn’t exactly badly off for striking public buildings, what with the nearby Natural History Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum buildings, and the Albert Memorial and Royal Albert Hall are only a short walk away. Nonetheless, as an example of Heavy Late Victorian Gothic you’d have to have gone a long way to have beaten it.  

Out of interest the new Commonwealth Institute moved into a striking modern building between Kensington High Street and Holland Park. I visited it in the late 70s and found that the displays were interesting, but on the whole it did feel just like another museum. Public funding ended at the turn of the last century and the building closed in the early noughties.  The building now houses the Design Museum.