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  • image SM Adam volume 33/20

Reference number

SM Adam volume 33/20

Purpose

[4] Finished drawing for the north front of a group of prison buildings for Edinburgh Bridewell, 1790-91, unexecuted

Aspect

Principal (north) elevation of a group of prison buildings comprising a central five-bay, single-storey entrance block flanked by curved wings terminating in single-bay pavilions connected by a low wall, all over a basement. The central building is rusticated with a portico supporting the coat of arms of Edinburgh with ‘BRIDEWELL’ below, flanked by recessed arches and pediments in the outer bays. The pavilions have plain rectangular windows within recessed arches, with pediments and string-coursing

Scale

bar scale of 1/2 an inch to 10 feet

Inscribed

Another Design for Bridewell / (in another hand) North front of the Bridewell for the City of Edinburgh proposed to be built on the Caltoun[sic] Hill

Signed and dated

  • 1790-91
    datable to 1790-91

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil and wash on laid paper (483x270)

Hand

Possibly
Adam office hand, possibly Robert Morison, John Robertson, or John Paterson

Watermark

Portal & Bridges

Literature

Bolton, 1922, p. 11
King, Vol. 2, 2001, p. 54
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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