From an early date in his career he displayed considerable inventive ingenuity. When stationed at Bermuda, as a young subaltern, he excited attention by numerous clever devices connected with the rigging of yachts, his tastes having led him to spend much of his time in sailing. – Royal Engineers Museum website,www.remuseum.org.uk, 2010

The old Royal Naval Dockyard and the Town of St. George's are the major concentrations of historic architecture in Bermuda, the one at the southwestern extremity of the Island, the other in the far northeast. Balanced in between are numerous splendid examples of domestic houses, churches, fortifications and other structures, with the City of Hamilton as a fulcrum, if you will, where many of its historic buildings have fallen to the bulldozer and Mammon.

Asked to decide which end is better, one would have to look at the evidence of a map of Bermuda, in which it appears that the scales, using that central fulcrum, are weighted in favour of the Dockyard, as the island lists to the southwest, with St. George's high up in the northeast.

In that Bermuda triangle of two ends and a decimated middle, each end can be seen as equal under a heritage sun, for each displays different types of buildings and settings, but with the town and fortifications of the east end being more equal with their World Heritage Site designation in 2000.

Each area is distinct, with the Dockyard, in terms of building material, being the main place where the very hard Bermuda stone was employed in the construction of the fortifications, magazines, storehouses and other official structures of the Royal Navy, such as the Commissioner's House, now the flagship of the National Museum. With all historic structures, an abiding question is raised over who created the building. Where records survive, we may determine who paid for a structure and possibly who designed and who built it, though the last, most important personage, is often lost to history.

We know for example that Nathaniel Butler, the third Governor of Bermuda (1619-1622) caused and may have designed the State House in St. George's, but who did the masonry is another story. Perhaps due to a loss of records, we know not who designed or built many of the forts in Bermuda, though Captain Thomas Cunningham managed to get his name on the one he designed on Paget Island in the late 1810s.

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".

Lieut. 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's 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.

Edward Cecil Harris, MBE, JP, PHD, FSA is Executive Director of the National Museum of Bermuda, incorporating the Bermuda Maritime Museum. Comments may be made to director@bmm.bm or 704-5480.