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  • image SM Adam volume 34/27

Reference number

SM Adam volume 34/27

Purpose

[11] Design for a D-shaped house, 1779, unexecuted

Aspect

Plan of a D-shaped house, with an eleven-bay principal front, and a thirteen-bay curved garden front. On the principal front the central three bays are slightly projecting, and behind a portico of engaged columns, and the end bays are projecting, and articulated by pilasters. The first, fifth, ninth, and thirteenth bays on the curved front are projecting, and contain tripartite windows, and between are three bays, with a central tripartite window, each behind a screen of two columns, The house has a central oval staircase, and a smaller oval back stair to one side, and contains reception rooms, dressing rooms, and a bedroom

Scale

bar scale of 1 3/5 inches to 10 feet

Inscribed

Plan of the Principal Story of Saxham House / the Seat of Hutchinson Mure Esqr (in the hand of William Adam and underwritten in pencil) / Mr Mure's Dressing room / Water Closet / Breakfast Room / Closet / Eating Room / Anti room / Drawing Room / Water Closet / Lady's Dressing room / Bed Chamber / Servants room / Powdering room / Gentlemans Dressing room / Hall / Library and measurements given

Signed and dated

  • 1779
    datable to 1779 Adel[phi cropped] / 3d A [gust cropped]

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil and pink and yellow wash on laid paper (604 x 505)

Hand

Adam office hand, additions to inscription in the hand of William Adam

Verso

No / 4 (on a small separate affixed sheet) / These Plans should go with the Book

Notes

The inscription on the verso: These Plans should go with the Book probably refers to Robert and James Adam's proposed publication Designs for Castles and Country Villas. However, this project never came to fruition.

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, Index p. 15
Rowan, 1985, p. 48
King, 2001, Volume II, p.126
For a full list of literature references see scheme notes.

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).