London's Petrie Museum, keepers of one of the largest collections of Egyptian antiques outside Egypt, has won a £4.9m grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Most of the collection has been stored away for many years in a number of small rooms at University College London (UCL) but they will now be re-housed in new premises.

A five-storey purpose-built museum, to be called the Panopticon and designed by architects Dixon Jones, will be constructed on land adjacent to the UCL Bloomsbury Theatre and enable the collection to be properly stored and cared for.

Extensive consultation is now underway as the detailed design process begins.

William Matthew Flinders Petrie was a pioneer in the field of Egyptian archaeology and sold his collection of thousands of objects to UCL in 1913. Details: www.petrie.ucl.ac.uk