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  • image SM Adam volume 39/25

Reference number

SM Adam volume 39/25

Purpose

[17] Design for the ground storey of a building, 1767, unexecuted

Aspect

Plan of the ground storey of a nineteen-bay building, flanked by five-bay wings. The central building has an entrance set behind a five-bay, stepped portico. This leads to a hall with a colonnaded screen, with a central passage beyond, which links rooms to the front and rear of the building. The rear façade has an entrance set within a three-bay, colonnaded, stepped and bowed front, and this leads to a salon or book room, with colonnaded screens. The principal and rear facades terminate in projecting three-bay, bow windows. To the left and right of the principal block there are five-bay wings, which contain domestic offices, and these are linked to the principal block by seven-bay, curved passages

Scale

bar scale of 1/2 inch to 10 feet

Inscribed

Plan of the Principal Story of a new Design for Luton House / one of the seats of (in the hand of William Adam) / the Earl of Bute (in the hand of William Adam, underwritten in pencil) / scullery / Wet Larder / Dry Larder / Kitchen / Bakehouse / Pantry / Court / Coals / Wood / Necessary / stewards Dining room / Drawing room / Organ Drawing room / Saloon or Book room / Book room / Book room / Book Room / Book room / Book room / Dressg room / Bed Chamber / Dress.g room / Hall / Anti Room / Eating Room / Necessary / Wood / Coals / Drying Yard / Wash house / Laundry / Brew house and some dimensions given

Signed and dated

  • April 1767
    15 April 1767

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil and wash on laid paper (727 x 521)

Hand

Possibly
Office hand, possibly Giuseppe Manocchi, William Hamilton or Joseph Bonomi, with part title inscription in the hand of William Adam

Verso

Luton / Designs made 15t April 1767 (cropped)

Watermark

LVG surmounted by a fleur-de-lis within a crowned cartouche

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, Index, p. 21
King, 2001, Volume II, pp. 85, 131
For a full list of literature references see scheme notes.

Level

Drawing

If you have any further information about this object, please contact us: drawings@soane.org.uk

Sir John Soane's collection includes some 30,000 architectural, design and topographical drawings which is a very important resource for scholars worldwide. His was the first architect’s collection to attempt to preserve the best in design for the architectural profession in the future, and it did so by assembling as exemplars surviving drawings by great Renaissance masters and by the leading architects in Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries and his near contemporaries such as Sir William Chambers, Robert Adam and George Dance the Younger. These drawings sit side by side with 9,000 drawings in Soane’s own hand or those of the pupils in his office, covering his early work as a student, his time in Italy and the drawings produced in the course of his architectural practice from 1780 until the 1830s.

Browse (via the vertical menu to the left) and search results for Drawings include a mixture of Concise catalogue records – drawn from an outline list of the collection – and fuller records where drawings have been catalogued in more detail (an ongoing process).