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  • image SM 67/5/14
Drawing. SM 67/5/14. ©Sir John Soane's Museum, London. Photo: Hugh Kelly
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Reference number

SM 67/5/14

Purpose

[4] Site plan with proposals for the conversion of Yarborough House into an Infirmary, April 1809

Aspect

Block plan with Plan shewing the premises lately occupied by Lord Yarborough / proposed to be converted into an Infirmary etc & also shewing / the relative situation of those premises, with[in] the Royal Hospital / at Chelsea

Inscribed

as above, labelled This plan contains Wards for 48 pensioners / on the Ground floor, & for 22 on the first floor, Paradise Row, Stable Yard, Coal Yard, Entrance, Drying Ground (twice), Creek, River Thames, Whisters, Proposed / site of Villa, Surgeon / House, airing Ground, Gough House & Garden, Surg[er]y, Surgery, Ward (eight times), Nurse (twice), Matron (twice), Cleansing / Ground, Court etc before / Gough House, (pencil) far left granted to Col[onel] / Gordon, Build the / airing G[rou]nd / far (illegible) and some calculations given

Signed and dated

  • John Soane, Arch[itect] / april. 1809

Hand

Soane office

Notes

Soane had many objections to the idea of converting Yarborough House into an Infirmary and met the Governor of Chelsea Hospital, Sir David Dundas, on 2 February 1809 to discuss the matter (recorded in Papers, presented to the House of Commons, relating to the Building of a New Infirmary, and the Leasing of Ground at Chelsea Hospital (ordered by the House of Commons to be Printed, 20th April 1809). He was told that there was no more land to be had - a result of part of Yarborough land having been leased to Colonel Gordon (so that he might build a villa).

On 3 February Soane went to survey Yarborough's house and recorded in the above mentioned papers that 'my Clerks began taking plans of the Ground and Buildings on the 4th of Feb. and continued until the whole was finished'. It seems likely that this drawing, SM 67/5/16 and SM 67/5/17 were part of this body of work as they mark out infirmary wards within the (then) existing structure of Yarborough House, experimenting with the possibility of conversion.

The inscription regarding the line given by Thomas Leverton (Colonel Gordon's architect) on SM 67/5/16 also records the debate he and Soane had on the limits of the Infirmary boundary, as Soane wished that the Infirmary should face the river for the best air and that the said boundary should not obstruct the symmetry of the pre-existing buildings.

Level

Drawing

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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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