[5] Competition design No.7 with motto 'To your decree I bend'

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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 13/1/9

Purpose

[5] Competition design No.7 with motto 'To your decree I bend'

Aspect

Ground Floor plan of a Design for a Lunatic Hospital

Scale

bar scale 1/14 in to 1 ft

Inscribed

as above, This Plan contains 144 Cells for the Women & / 106 Cells for the Men Patients. / The parts tinted with light Indian Ink are proposed to be raised only One Story, Area for the Women 196 feet by 115 feet, Area for the Men 220 feet by 115 feet, (inscribed by Dance) Old Street. Rooms labelled: Straw Chimney (twice), Straw Barn (twice), Keepers room / 11.6 by 10.6, Warming room / 17.6 by 12.6 (twice), Warming Room / 28 by 18 (twice), Warm^groom / 17 1½ by 10.6, Gallery (twice), Physician / 20 feet Square, Master's Parlor / 20 by 16, Masters / Kitchen / 9 by 15, Apothecary's Parlor / 20 by 15, Apothecary's Shop / 15 by 12, Waiting room / 13 by 12, Wardrobe / 8:6 by 12, Court, the Ground / raised, Covered way, Court, Matron / 21.7 by 10.6, Bedroom / 8 by 15, Hot Bath / Skylight / 12.6 by 15, Cold Bath / skylight / 17 by 15, Court, Covered way, Surgery / 17 by 10: 6, Hot bath / 17 by 10.6, Privy, Sink, Passage, Mens Infirmary for 14 Patients, Keeper / 11.6 by 10.6, Cold Bath / 17 by 15, Bone house, Womens Infirmary for 14 Patients, Privy. To your decree I bend (competition motto)

Signed and dated

datable to before 31 May 1777

Medium and dimensions

Pen and washes within single or double ruled border on laid paper with one fold mark (659 x 980)

Hand

Soane ?

Watermark

J Whatman

Notes

Robert Baldwin's hand can be seen in the titles while the rendering of the elevation and section and the fine pen lines of, for example, the roof, railing and rustication reflect Baldwin's distinctive palette and drawing style. George Dance may have written a few of the labels, those with 'printed' lettering (plain, forward sloping and not joined up) are like those of some of his own drawings (cf. SM D2/9/9). On the other hand, Baldwin sometimes used the same sort of simple lettering (cf. SM volume 9/7). In fact, it is quite usual to have several people working on competition drawings and the plans may have been drawn by Soane, Baldwin or indeed, Dance.

The plan is a stretched ellipse. A plan form that later appears in the preliminary studies by George Dance for a British Senate House that was adopted by Soane for the final design exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1779. See (Soane's architectural education ...): Preliminary designs, some by George Dance, final design exhibited at the Royal Academy, reduced copies, and perspectives by J.M.Gandy and George Bailey, for a British Senate House 1778-9 and later (16)

The elevation is plainer than the earlier design and has the lunette windows within two-storey blind arches found in Dance's executed scheme. See J.Lever, Catalogue of the drawings of George Dance the Younger ..., 2003, catalogue [34]

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.

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).