ABSTRACT
John, the Second Duke of Montagu owned Montagu House near Bloomsbury, originally built circa 1786 by French architect Pierre Pouget. This manor house was handed over to the Trustees of the British Museum by Montagu’s two daughters, Mary and Isabella, and their husbands who jointly inherited the property after the Second Duke’s death. As is well known, circa 1845 the original home of the British Museum was demolished and architect Robert Smirke’s new vision of a national repository materialized on the same site but on a much grander, appropriately Victorian, scale. The demolished Museum then gained mythological status. Montagu House contributes very substantially to people's understanding of the narrative of the urban geography of London in the first half of the eighteenth century, as the city continued to encroach upon the outskirts. “Better reception” of the items on display was from the very beginning a top priority as was “convenient use.”
