[1] Surveys of the house(s)

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Town houses
  - London: 59-60 Lincoln's Inn Fields (Lindsey House), Camden: surveys and alterations for Sir Spencer Perceval, 1802 (9)

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Reference number

SM 38/3/1

Purpose

[1] Surveys of the house(s)

Aspect

Plan of the Ground Floor of 'Lindsey House' in Lincolns Inn Fields and Plan of the Drawing Room Floor

Scale

bar scale of 2/9 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

as above, The Hon^ble Specncer Perceval, labelled: Area (twice), Library, Hall (twice), Closet, Bed Room,(pencil) Locked up, Court (twice), (pencil) Locked / a Water / Closet &^c, Skylight (twice), Strong Closet, Eating Room, Library, (pencil) This Room / locked up and dimensions given; (verso, pencil): The Hon^ble S Perceval

Signed and dated

2 October 1802
Lincolns Inn Fields Oct^r 2 1802

Medium and dimensions

Pen, sepia and blue washes, pricked for transfer on laid paper with two fold marks (572 x 688)

Hand

Henry Hake Seward (1778 - 1848)
Pupil and assistant May 1794 - September 1808.

Notes

The left hand side of the drawing shows a survey of the ground floor and the right hand side shows a survey of the drawing room floor. Neither survey is complete as several rooms in No 59 (on the left) appear to have been locked up when the survey was made, and therefore the dimensions of three rooms (two on the ground and one on the first floor) are not given. The hand is that of Henry Hake Seward although the Office Day Books show that Charles Malton also worked on the plans of the house, so this drawing might have been a joint effort (see also drawing [2]).

The house had been divided in 1751-52 by Sir Isaac Ware although by the time of Soane's survey there were already some breakthroughs between the two halves - one behind the staircase on the ground floor and two between the landings and the front rooms on the first floor. Interestingly, although the front of the house remained symmetrical when the house was divided - to the extent that the central window on the first floor was retained but blocked up - the rear elevation did not. Thus the Library has three windows whereas the Eating Room has only two. The total frontage is 57 feet 10 inches. The two front areas have staircases leading down to basements or cellars, although there is no corresponding survey of the lower level of the building at the Soane Museum.

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).