This has now been rectified. The Manton entrance, as it is called after the insurance magnate Sir Edwin Manton who donated £7m towards the new development, now pierces that formidable side wall at basement level where the new temporary exhibition galleries are. Steps and a long ramp lead down to it, the incision in the ground lined with opaque glass. Although the strip of land along this side of the gallery was previously just a scruffy service area and car park, I had hoped for something better in the new landscaping than the distinctly austere paved forecourt provided by the external architects, Allies and Morrison. It is not a friendly entrance. There is no joy or wit in it. Apart from its higher-quality materials, it is exactly like the approach to a pedestrian underpass, which is precisely NOT the feeling you get from the great entrance ramp at Tate Modern.

Inside, though, things look up. Or rather, you look up. From the satisfyingly large, modern-classical and high-ceilinged foyer (no sense of being jammed into a basement) you can strike off right to the café, restaurant, and (new) shop, or go left into the five new exhibition rooms where all that Victorian flesh is presently exposed, or mount the appropriately grand, daylit limestone staircase to the main gallery floor. You pass Tony Cragg’s 1981 wall piece “Britain seen from the North” on the stairs, previously on show in Tate Modern. (All the wall space in these new circulation areas is designed for hanging). At the top of the stairs, you see straight through into the central sculpture court, now showing Richard Deacon’s display of medieval carvings. An Eric Gill and a Francis Bacon flank the doorway, between them metaphorically carrying the entire weight of British art. If you now turn left, you are in the start of Tate Britain’s newly-arranged, chronological-yet-themed, canter through the centuries - starting with some telling smashed-up pieces from the Reformation, but quickly moving into the English Renaissance, such as it was.