The following is an excerpt from an article written by Edward Cecil Harris in his weekly column, 'Heritage Matters'.

The article appeared in The Royal Gazette's August 21, 2010 edition. Dr. Harris is the executive director of the National Museum of Bermuda, which incorporates the Bermuda Maritime Museum.

Out at the Dockyard, we are lacking most of the original plans and records of the great heritage buildings there, excepting the Commissioner's House, which was designed by Edward Hall, chief architect to the Royal Navy, and the famous engineer John Rennie the Younger.

Hence it was with delight that Jane Downing, registrar at the National Museum, recently discovered evidence of the designer of several buildings in the Keep Yard below the Commissioner's House. As the records relate to a building with one of the most magnificent interiors in Bermuda, the 'Queen's Exhibit Hall', and given the name Francis Fowke on the architectural plan, we may formally lay claim to discovering Bermuda's 'Royal Albert Hall'.

Lieutenant Francis Fowke arrived on the Island in April 1845 at the age of 22, along with his wife of but a few months. An extended honeymoon here lasting upwards of five years saw the birth of several children and the premature death of one. The evidence of Fowke's involvement with the buildings of the Keep Yard rests in two drawings signed by him in the archives of the National Museum. One is a detailed architectural plan of a small building for "live shells" next to the Water Gate and Keep Pond. The second drawing is of sketches and descriptions of other buildings, including what is now the Queen's Exhibit Hall for "4,968 barrels" of gunpowder.

The interior of the Queen's Exhibit Hall is divided into five bays to a side, with a central hall connecting the whole. Arching over those spaces are the magnificent arches of a brick ceiling, embellished with proud pointing. Aside from the beauty of that arrangement, which is carried on piers of hard Bermuda limestone between the bays, a recent classical music concert, 'Thomas Tallis to the Beatles', organised by museum trustee and Honorary German Consul, Jens Alers, with the Bermuda Chamber Choir, proved its value as an auditorium, with excellent acoustics, before several hundred guests: Bermuda's "Royal Albert Hall", if you will, as Fowke later designed that building in London.

The Royal Engineers Museum's website intimates that when Fowke returned to Britain that "he gave the first signs of the brilliant architectural and constructive genius for which he was afterwards celebrated". Given the connection of Fowke with the Queen's Exhibit Hall, it may be suggested that those first signs actually might have appeared first in Bermuda, when he was only a man in his mid-twenties. In commemoration of his talent and achievements, the Royal Engineers introduced the Fowke Medal in 1866, which is still awarded to outstanding officers of their Royal School of Military Engineering.

After his return to Britain, Fowke went on to design a number of significant buildings and interiors, including the famous Royal Albert Hall, which was constructed on the site of the Great Exhibit of 1851 in South Kensington. A number of his works were museums and galleries, including the National Gallery of Ireland, the Royal Museum of Scotland and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

On December 4, 1865, at a mere 42 years, Captain Francis Fowke, RE, died suddenly. The literary Athenaeum magazine noted that "the public has lost in this engineer and architect one of the ablest of its servants". Sir Henry Cole, director of the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum) stated that "I firmly believe that the arts of construction in this country have sustained a great loss with Captain Fowke's death".

Given his involvement with a number of museums and the Royal Albert Hall, it is likely that Captain Fowke would be delighted with the transition of his powder magazine at the Dockyard into a major exhibition space at the National Museum of Bermuda, as well as its occasional use as a concert hall.