Prince Albert opened the extensive new gardens of the Royal Horticultural Society in South Kensington before a crowd of 10,000 people. The more than twenty-two acres site remained the fifty-year old society's main garden till it closed in 1882 and the space was taken up for the construction of the Royal Albert Hall, and later the present buildings of the Science Museum, the Royal College of Music, and Imperial College. (By John Osborne)