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  • image SM Adam volume 33/06

Reference number

SM Adam volume 33/06

Purpose

[2] Variant finished drawing for a plan and section of additions to the College of Justice, 1791, unexecuted

Aspect

Plan: Same as SM Adam volume 33/5 with some additions and omissions. The bookshelves and columns have been omitted from the library, and a pair of staircases have been added to either side of the entrance porch to the hall. The columns in the inner house have been made paired columns, with a recess set in the wall of the existing college for the jury, and curved passages to a water closet and corridor in place of the niches. The retiring room has been made smaller to allow for an additional hall, with a porch. The washes denote proposed (black) and existing (grey) fabric Section: Longitudinal section of the inner house and corridor to rooms proposed to be added to the College of Justice. The room shows two arched openings on the north wall articulated by Corinthian pilasters flanking a central chimneypiece with an overmantel and a plaque above. In the centre is the seating, bar, table, and Lords seats. Pairs of columns support a mezzanine level at the entrance with seating. The coloured washes denote the different building materials

Scale

bar scale of 1 1/2 inches to 10 feet

Inscribed

(In the hand of William Adam) Plan and Section of the New Inner House with Robing Room &c for the Lords of Session Edinburgh / (in another hand) Part of the wall of the Outer House / Robing room / Retiring room for the Jury / Clerks room / Hall / Door to the Outer house / Part of the Outer House / Recess for the Jury / Lords Private Door / Inner House / Bar / Table / Lords / Seats / Passage / Water / Closet / Stairs to the Gallery / area 10ft wide / Area / Passage / Retiring or consulting / room / Retiring room for the / Jury / Clerks room / Hall / Porch / Court / (in the hand of William Adam) Plan of the New Library for the Writers to the / Signet ~ / (in another hand) Entrance from the Parliament / Square / Clerks room for the / writers to the Signet / water / closet / Principal Stairs / Writers Hall and Library / Area 10ft wide / Gallery Stairs / Steps / Porch / Part of Entrance Hall with some room dimensions and pencil calculations. (Verso) Advocates Library Edinr / 13 Plan consisting of Plan of the Writer’s / Library Advocates Library one of the Courts of Justice / ground Plans and Section / from No 2 / 3 Plans / No 1 / Fair Plans of the Court of Session with Retiring Rooms

Signed and dated

  • 3/11/1791
    Edinr 3d Novr / 1791 –

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil, wash and coloured wash including lemon yellow and pink within a ruled border on laid paper (1095x552)

Hand

Possibly
Adam office hand, possibly Robert Morison or John Robertson

Watermark

Portal & Bridges

Literature

Bolton, 1922, p. 11
Kerr, 1998, pp. 4-7
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.

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