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  • image SM Adam volume 21/29

Reference number

SM Adam volume 21/29

Purpose

[27] Alternative preliminary designs for Briesley (or Brizlee) Tower, 1777, unexecuted

Aspect

Ground plan, two alternative elevations of the principal front, and a detail of a viewing tower; containing a central spiral staircase; and with a projecting ground storey. The left-hand elevation shows a neo-classical scheme, with doors and windows on the ground storey surmounted by oculus windows, and set within relieving arches; the ground storey is surmounted by a first-storey viewing platform, above which is a three-storey circular tower; containing slit windows, and with the bays articulated by three-storey relieving arches; and at the top of this tower is another viewing platform, and a narrower single-storey tower. The right-hand elevation shows a Gothic scheme, with three-bay screens of lobed arches alternating with single projecting bays containing ogee niches on the ground storey; and the ground storey is surmounted by a balustraded first-storey viewing platform, and a three-storey octagonal tower with arched windows; and this tower is surmounted by another balustraded viewing platform, and a narrower single-storey octagonal tower. There is a detail in the bottom right-hand corner showing one of the lobed arches of the ground-storey screens in the Gothic scheme

Scale

not to scale

Signed and dated

  • 1777
    datable to c1777

Medium and dimensions

Pencil on laid paper (270 x 197)

Hand

Robert Adam

Literature

Rowan, 2001, p. 49
For a full list of literature references see scheme notes.

Level

Drawing

Exhibition history

'Bob the Roman': Heroic Antiquity and the Architecture of Robert Adam, Sir John Soane's Museum, London, 27 June - 27 September 2003; New York School of Interior Design Gallery, 29 September - 4 December 2004

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).