Thomas Cubitt & The London Institution
The formation of the London Institution & Cubitt’s Contract for a new building
How it all started
The roster of bankers and influential traders who were involved in the foundation of the Institution is very impressive. Sir John Baring [various Barings went onto support the foundation of The University of London], John Gurney, George Hibbert, Lord Carrington, J. W. Freshfield, Henry Cazenove, James Cazenove jun(?), H. H Hoare, B. Hanbury & George Grenfell are amongst the names readily spotted in the subscribers and minute books.
The Institution’s regulations and a list of the proprietors [effectively shareholders] was printed in 1805 under the title ‘Proposed plan of the London Institution, with a list of the proprietors‘.
In 1806 a proposed Royal Charter was drawn up and was granted on 21st January, 1807.
A crest was granted, by the Royal College of Arms, on 11th June, 1807.
How The London Institution came to need a very grand new building
A report entitled ‘Report of the Committee of Enquiry of the London Insitution‘ May 1812 set out the requirements for a new building with a lecture theatre.
For which more funds were, naturally, required. The books of subscribers, of an additional 30 guineas [Names of Proprietors Subscribing an Additional Thirty Guineas], was of quite an optimistic size of some hundred or so pages but only five pages are used listing 106 names. However, the full printed list of names is substantially larger suggesting that the ledger was simply abandoned in favour of some other means of record keeping. Still it is an interesting insight into whom the first 100 or so subscribers were.
Initially, The London Institution had other premises but was looking around for something more impressive and expansive. After many attempts The Board managed to persuade the City of London Corporation to offer a site on good terms in Moorgate.
A well known architect, Mr William Brooks, was engaged to draw up some design schemes. As is often the case, The Board wanted to proceed to build starting with outline/concept drawings.
The drawing, below, is of Brook’s concept with the rotunda for an observatory. This is possibly the only surviving sketch or drawing of Brook’s for The London Institution project. The drawing is presumably from sometime between 1813 and 1815 although, all we can be certain about is that, the rotunda was never built and it was deleted from the scheme as part of the cost saving exercise(s) of late 1815.
Brooks was then appointed on a fee of 600 guineas, plus disbursements, to design the new building.
How to finance and build a building?
1. Select some drawings
Brooks produced a variety of concept drawings, around sixteen, and ultimately ‘Plan 13’ was chosen. Sadly neither ‘Plan 13′ nor any of the other versions appear to have survived despite being framed and hung in the old London Institution building – there was a specific cost line in Brooks’ fee proposal for that.
The closest that we may be able to come to understanding what ‘Plan 13’ is this engraving which is taken from “llustrations of the Public Buildings of London: With Historical and Descriptive Accounts”, by John Britton, Augustus Pugin which this plate has unfortunately been removed from in the past. Assuming that ‘Plan 13’ was actually built to: this was, presumably, copied from the drawings that Brooks had framed to be displayed in the new institution building. A very similar plate to the general ground floor plan at the bottom of the sheet, below, is also in An historical Account of The London Institution, Charles Skipple and East, London, 1835 as Fig 1 entitled ‘General Ground Floor Plan’.
2. Advertise for some builders with a month for tender returns
It was agreed to go through a pretty standard tender process for the project with sealed bids in by a due date.
Given the extraordinarily short timescale allowed, one month, this presented an issue for anyone seeking specific prices for other trades or even prices of specific materials. This must have meant that some of the tender returns were little more than guesswork based on areas and volumes multiplied by the general types of works.
3. Tenders are duly received and tabulated and a contractor selected
This is a very familiar part of the process. Except that the tender was seemingly chosen purely on the basis of it being the lowest bid. No sense of pre-qualification here! It is worth bearing in mind that Cubitt had, previously, submitted an unsolicited proposal to carry out the contract works and this had then been sent for tender.
4. Get the build started: based on a Letter of Intent
Starting any kind of a construction contract based on a letter of intent is, usually, a disaster. No less in this case.
As what then followed, was the usual dance round the contractual maypole that continues to today. With lots of opinions expressed and an increasingly frustrated contractor burning through money for little result, for want of proper instruction, drawings or a contract.
Cubitt, judging by his letter of 30th December 1815 reproduced below, clearly was not at all pleased about this and wanted to get the project on track.
5. Cost saving measures
As anyone who has ever been involved with a large and unique project the initial cost estimates from architects and surveyors are always way lower than the tenders received.
Initially the board didn’t want to spend more than £15,000 on a new building this crept up to £20,000 at one stage and Cubitt then tendered £26,000, a very round number, for the works. So some cost savings were needed to close this gap.
This usually manifests itself in a cost saving or cost engineering round. It was just so with The London Institution’s new building.
Various rounds of cost savings were discussed with, at one point the costs going down to around £16,605, 30th December 2015, ‘to cover every expense of the mansion.’
However, oddly, the contract was then executed for £20,605 thus leaving the board open to Cubitt’s largess in reducing the contract scope.
6. Contract is executed under seal
And finally there was a contract in place: much to the relief of all. With a payment of £2,500 made directly to Cubitt’s account via Messrs Robarts & Co.
Cleary conscious of the lack of drawings provided to Cubitt, Brooks agrees [letter of 30th May 1816, below] to Cubitt’s suggestion that Cubitt be paid £750, on acocunt.
7. Argue over the architects fees?
The architect, William Brooks, seems to have totally underestimated the work involved in such a large and detailed building. for a start his initial fee was based on the unrealistic initial build cost estimates.
This fee estimate was apparently made on the basis of a Contract Sum of roughly half that entered into. This seems unbelievably naive and really shows that in employing Brooks as the supervising surveyor The Board had appointed someone hopelessly out of their depth. Indeed this proved to me the case with major issues over foundations and delivering plans and drawings in a timely manner to Cubitt to the execution of The Contract.
8. Periodic certificates
As with any project of this kind, these days, periodic certificates are produced by the Contract Administrator, in this case William Brooks wearing the hat of surveyor.
Whilst these do seem to be oddly round numbered the staged payments structure in the contract is of the cliff edge variety. In a cliff edge valuation process there is no % completed idea but each section of works must be completed to claim the valuation. This has the major disadvantage that the contractor is denied cash-flow for even the smallest element incomplete but it has the advantage that it drives sections of work to be fully complete. The trouble is that this sounds good but in real life it is an incentive to ‘just get things done at any cost’ to get to the cliff edge!
9. Running account
As with all projects a regular sanity-check on the overall numbers is a good idea. There are several example of this. In the one below, 9th January 1817, the architects fees do not appear to have been fully accounted for.
As the project draws to a close a form of trial cash balance appears in the minutes on 16th April 1818.
10. Practical completion is attained
Cubitt got there in spite of all of the various problems and The Board appear to have been delighted with what he did for The London Insitution’s new home.
The scrap of paper pasted into the front of one of the minute volumes below is interesting as it shows the manner in which the running account was probably kept. It also shows the dates of payments in 1815 and 1817 whereas there are seemingly no payments made in 1816 if this record is to be believed. You can understand why Cubitt learned from this that the cliff-edge form of contract was terrible from a cash flow point of view and avoided it totally in later works.
11. Arbitrate over the Final Account
William Brooks had pretty much agreed Cubitt’s final account. The sense here is that The Board didn’t totally agree with the account and the extras and wanted to see if they could reduce the bill. So there is a strong sense that the Arbitrator is appointed to tell The Board what it needed to hear and end the debate so that Cubitt could be paid what was due. This is probably why Cubitt so readily agrees to the Arbitrator being appointed in the preceding minute, 10th December 1818, in the same volume.
The 1816 Contract with The Builder
The various contract sections would look quite similar to us today. The flowery language and the giving of considerable powers of rejection of works to the Contract Administrator, William Brooks, with his surveyors hat on would not.
All in all the contract runs for some 120 pages and gives detailed specifications of a number of things, in a verbose manner, that should properly have been on the drawings. So inevitably conflict would have been baked into the contract between the drawings and the wordings as the drawings were updated. That of itself is a strange decision. That said the, what we would today term Construction Drawings, were not available to Cubitt from the off.
Sadly, the various drawings sets of drawings do not seem to have survived. So, The 1816 Contract is all we have to go on. In the back of the contract are all of the costed variations to the original scope.
In the back of the contract are all of the costed variations to the original scope and they are listed out here, with values in the table of contents.
Some interior engravings
The Library
The library book cases were taken from the old buildings in Old Jewry and modified as made plain in a minute of 9th July 1818, below.
The Lecture Theatre
The lecture theatre was procured from Cubitt under Contract Variation K, for £1820. Naturally Cubitt insisted on some different payment terms and provision of plans, identified as ‘Drawing Nos 8 & 9’, prior to commencement!
An introductory lecture was given by William Thomas Brande, of The Royal Society of London and Professor of Chemistry at The Royal Institution of Great Britain, on 5th May 1819. The text of the discourse was published in the July 1819 edition of The Quarterly Journal of The Royal Institution – the front page of the discourse is reproduced below. The full text of the lecture can be read here.
The magnificent Cubitt/Brooks building needed more funding for its activities. This lead to the London Institution Act 1821 which provided for some level of ongoing funding.
The London Institution carried on with its original function in much the same building until around 1913 when there was a scheme to modify the Cubitt building. Apparently the building had become dilapidated in nearly 90 years of operation. The improvements scheme appears not have come to fruition although there were detailed plans and schemes drawn up. It is also possible that because of the increasing role of University College, London and the founding of the University of London in 1936 that The London Institution was viewed as something of an anachronism.
Later history of The London Institution
In around 1912 SOAS took over The London Institution building and remained in the building until it was demolished around 1936.
SOAS has some holdings of photographs and documents relating to the original building in its special collections. The originals that were used in the Country Life article of 1936 appear to be held in the SOAS special collections.
The SOAS blog makes two interesting assertions:-
“The building had been occupied by the London Institution for roughly a century but was in a state of disrepair, and was transferred to the Office of Works under the London Institution (Transfer) Act in 1912 [first reading 30th July 1912 here, second reading 8th October 1912 here & bill here. The transfer was enacted with the purpose of refurbishing the building for occupation by the School.”
and
“In March 1936 the building in Finsbury Circus was sold to a subsidiary of the major building firm Holland, Hannen and Cubitts (responsible for the Senate building, University of London, amongst other iconic landmarks) and immediately demolished, drawing a final line under the first phase in SOAS’ history.
One of this things that does come out in Hansard is that there was no intention, at the time of the 1912 bill, to demolish the Cubitt/Brooks building.
The commitment, “It is not intended to destroy the very handsome building, but to spend money upon it in order to adapt it to the purposes of the school,” was made by one Mr Wedgwood Benn, Lord of the Treasury.
Which, today would seem amazing that Cubitts demolished what had so firmly launched Thomas Cubitt’s trajectory as a very major contractor!
Country Life published a photo spread on the building before it was demolished in 1936, reproduced below.
The article contains some compelling pictures. The originals of the pictures are in the SOAS archives.
Both of images 2 & 3 are in SOAS special collections. Image 3 [Library] SOAS/SPA/1/009. We are working on establishing the catalogue number for image 2 [Vestibule]but it can be seen in high resolution here.
Further material
An historical Account of The London Institution was printed in 1835 by Charles Skipple and East [pages 13-14 covers the new building by Cubitt] setting out the history of the first 30 years of The London Institution.