The Albert Memorial Museum and Free Library

Following the death of Prince Albert in 1861, an influential group of citizens and local gentry was formed to commemorate him in some suitable way. They decided to provide for the city an educational institution of the sort he had tried to encourage in a building combining a museum, free library and facilities for teaching art and science. From this grand vision has grown the University of Exeter, the Exeter campus of the University of Plymouth and the Exeter City Library Service, as well as the museum which occupies it today.

The new building in Queen Street was designed by John Hayward, a leading local architect in the Gothic Revival. It is widely regarded as the city's finest work of Victorian architecture. The drawing by the architect John Pinn shows it as completed in 1869 and prior to the extensions of the 1880s.

Acknowledgments: RAM Museum