[47] Letter from clerk of works

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Country houses, etc.
  - Betchworth Castle (Surrey): alterations and additions to the house, designs for lodge, dairy, ice house, greenhouse and stables, 1798-1800 (68 )
    - Design for a greenhouse, May 1800 (7)

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Reference number

SM volume 42/141A

Purpose

[47] Letter from clerk of works

Inscribed

Betchworth Castel May 4 1800 /? Sir / I rcd your letter and the Draft Inclosed / for 25 pounds M^r and M^rs Peters are at Betchworth / and Desir'd me to send the Out lines of the / Greenhouse they would wish to have the width / of 6 feet at A to be covered with Lead all the / other post glass and that no [?] flowers wanted / desird me -- cannot go any wider than / the 15'3" but wish any other Improvement / If to be done before I leave the Castel / I shall be glad to have the Drawings, as soon / as possibel - The ---------- over Laundry / Mr Peters wish to have ---- (?) parts the two / rooms to be made as big carried over \ each other one Room is for Maid servant / and the Other for Men shall be glad to --- / If should put a quarter partition // Mr Morfield desir'd one me to inform you / that in Consequence of ----- ------ he / will not be ---- to leave the Castel / before Sunday Week. // W^r. Payne

Signed and dated

04/05/1800
May 4 1800

Medium and dimensions

Brown pen page 141A of volume 42

Hand

Walter Payne
Walter Payne was Soane's long-standing clerk of works. He was first employed as clerk of works at the Bank of England from 1789 and remained there until Soane's resignation in 1833. He was the clerk of works for Soane's Pitzhanger house and he and his wife were left an annuity in Soane's will.
D.Stroud, Sir John Soane Architect, 1984, pp.64, 73n, 76; G. Darley, John Soane, an Accidental Romantic, 1999, p.92.
See also drawing [44] by Payne.

Level

Drawing

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

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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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