The site at Millbank was originally purchased in 1799 from the Marquess of Salisbury for £12,000 by the philosopher Jeremy Bentham, acting on behalf of the Crown, for the erection of his proposed Panopticon prison as Britain's new National Penitentiary [REF].
The marshy site on which the prison stood meant that the builders experienced problems of subsidence from the outset, and explains the succession of architects.