[2] Competition design No.3 with motto 'Mihi turpe relinqui est'

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Public buildings
  - London: St Luke's Hospital for Lunatics, Islington: unexecuted competition designs, 1777 (9)

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Reference number

SM 13/1/5

Purpose

[2] Competition design No.3 with motto 'Mihi turpe relinqui est'

Aspect

The Ground Floor of a Design for a Lunatic Hospital / The parts distinguished by the lighter Teints (sic) are proposed to be elevated only Nine feet above the level of this / Story, excepting the Infirmarys which are supposed to be the same height as the Ground floor of the / Hospital. / This design contains 138 Cells for the Female Patients / 113 Cells for the Male ditto / (total) 251, Old Street, Area for the Women 197 feet by 146 feet, Area for the Men 197 feet by 146 feet

Scale

bar scale of 1/14 in to 1 ft

Inscribed

rooms labelled: Cold Bath / 16 feet square, Warming Room / 19 by 19, Common / Sink, Privy, Corridor, Warming Room / 19 by 13, Passage to Straw Chim^y, Straw Chimney, Keepers room / 11 by 10.6, (entrance) Cortile, Vestibule, Physicians / Examining Rooms / 16.6, 5.0 / Masters Parlour / 16.6, 20.0, Apothecarys Parlour / 16.0 by 17.1½, Mens waiting / Room / 16 by 8 feet, Womens waiting / room 16.6 by 9:6, Matrons Parlour / 16. by 9:6, Matron's bedroom / 16.6 by 9.6, Apothecarys Shop / 16.6 by 9.6, Apothecarys Still / Room / 16.6 by 9:6, Court, Covered way to the several Wards and Infirmarys &c, Masters Garden / the Ground raised / To within one foot of the / level of this floor, Hot bath / 17.1½ by 10.6, Surgery / 17:1½by 10.6, Mens / Wardrobe, Iron Gate (twice, separating men's side from women's side), Womens / Wardrobe / 8.0 by 10.6, Mens / Hot bath / 18:3 by 10:0, Women's Infirmary 81 feet long, Surgery &c / 19 by 7.6, Straw Barn / 19 by 21, Area to the Women's Infirmary, Drying Yard for Linen &c, Men's Infirmary / 76 feet long, 19 feet (wide), Area to the Men's Infirmary, Sink, Privy, Warming Room / 19 by 13, Passage to Infirmary, Warming Room / 19 by 13, Keepers room / 11 by 10.6, Passage to Straw Chim^y, Straw Chimney, Passage to Warming room, Warming Room / 19 by 19, Bonehouse, Mens Cold bath / 16 feet square, Straw / Barn. N^o3 (competition number added). Mihi turpe relinqui est [it is shameful for me to be left behind] (competition motto)

Signed and dated

datable to before 31 May 1777

Medium and dimensions

Pen and washes within single ruled border on laid paper with one fold mark (656 x 999)

Hand

Soane?

Watermark

J Whatman

Notes

Robert Baldwin's hand can be seen in the inscribed titles as well as the rendering of the elevation and section of SM 13/1/6. It has been suggested (Professor du Prey, in conversation February 2009) that the room labels on this drawing and SM 13/1/6 were added by Soane who may have drawn the plans too. It is not uncommon to have several hands making a competition drawing.

The plan could be described as a stretched half-ellipse (cut longitudinally). The elevation has a Pantheon-type dome in the centre over a three-bay, four-storey frontispiece with three Wyatt windows, the centre one with a pair of reclining statues. The giant, two-storey windows at each end have a pair of Greek Doric columns with plain shafts and without bases.

Literature

P.du Prey, John Soane: the making of an architect, 1982. Chapter 3 (Architecture for madness: the St Luke's competition)

Level

Drawing

Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation

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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