Increasing stores of valuable specimens began to arrive in London; and the building at Craig's Court, off Whitehall, where the young Museum of Economic (afterwards Practical) Geology was placed, became too small. De la Beche appealed to the authorities to provide a larger structure and to widen the whole scope of the scientific establishment of which he was the head. Parliament sanctioned the erection of a museum in Jermyn Street, London, and the organisation of a staff of professors with laboratories and other appliances. The establishment, in which were combined the offices of the Geological Survey, the Museum of Practical Geology, the Royal School of Mines and the Mining Record Office, was opened in 1851.