Following the success of the Great Exhibition of 1851, the Royal Albert Hall was conceived by Albert, the Prince Consort, as the centrepiece of the proposed development of a range of national institutions - cultural, scientific and academic - that for the first time would be located on a single site. As a first step towards the realisation of the Prince’s masterplan, a 50-acre estate in South Kensington - in which today the Hall still stands - was bought from the substantial profits made by the Exhibition.