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  • image SM Adam volume 33/19

Reference number

SM Adam volume 33/19

Purpose

[13] Finished drawing for the ground floor of a group of prison buildings for Edinburgh Bridewell, 1791, unexecuted

Aspect

Ground plan for a group of prison buildings with surrounding yards enclosed by a continuous retaining wall, similar to SM Adam volume 1/271 with some minor omissions and additions, including a D-shaped inspection lodge and the omission of the portico and bow in the entrance lodge. The entrance lodge has a large wash house, fumigating room and porter’s room. The space between the cells and inspector’s lodge of the central building forms a chapel with a pulpit and seating for ‘strangers’. The flanking blocks have outer bowed ends with apertures to look over their respective yards. To the rear of the main building is a small circular Inspector’s lodge with apertures to survey each yard

Scale

to a scale

Inscribed

Yard for Bedlamites / Yard for Women / Yard for Debters / Yard for Felons / Yard for Convicts / Bridewell yard for Idle Men and Youth / Yard for Infirmary / Cell / Cell / Cell / Cell / Cell / Cell / Staircase / Bedlem[sic] / Inspectors / Lodges / Laboratory / Passage leading to the Bedlam / Passage / Refractory / Cell / Refractory / Cell / Closet / Stairs to the Cells / Cell / Cell / Cell / Cell / Cell / Cell / Cell / Cell / Cell / Cell / Cell / Cell / Cell / Cell / Cell / Cell / Cell / The Chapel Seats for Strangers / Pulpit / Inspectors Lodge / Inner Lobby / Stairs to the Cells / Closet / Refractory / Cell / Refractory / Cell / Passage to the Infirmary / Inspectors Lodge / Staircase / Cell / Cell / Cell / Cell / Cell / Cell / Cell / Cell / Laboratory / Infirmary / Staircase / and / Lobby / Bed Chambr / Kitchen / Closet / Passage / Govornors[sic] / Parlor / Hall / Kitchen / Bedroom / Govnor / Office / Deputys / Parlor / Fumigating / room / Porters room / Hall / Wash house / Entrance / (verso) No 4 this Plan go 5th in the Book

Signed and dated

  • 1790-91
    datable to 1790-91

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil, wash and coloured wash including pink and cerulean blue on laid paper (744x562)

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.

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).