The Victoria and Albert Museum was established at South Kensington in the 1850s, on land which had formerly made up the Brompton Park House Estate. Although run down and divided into three dwellings – an interior view of the central one of which is seen here – Brompton Park House was still standing on the south-west corner of the site. By 1857 Francis Fowke, a captain in the Royal Engineers, had supervised the renovation of Brompton Park House and the building had been adapted to provide temporary initial accommodation for the art school. It also accommodated the sappers from the Royal Engineers who were employed in clearing the site and constructing the Museum; the hall and staircase seen in this watercolour belong to a part of the building that is labelled ‘schools’ in a plan of ca. 1857, and ‘barracks’ in a plan of ca. 1860. Bordering Exhibition Road, the south edge of the Museum plot was the last to be filled with purpose-built permanent buildings. Brompton Park House therefore appears to have survived until 1899, the year in which Aston Webb’s plans for completing the Museum began to be carried out.