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  • image SM 37/3/25

Reference number

SM 37/3/25

Purpose

[296] Finished drawing, Court of King's Bench, 1823 - 1824

Aspect

Plan of the main (ground) floor of the Court of King's Bench in the New Law Courts, furnished with fittings taken from the Old Court of King's Bench, not as executed

Scale

bar scale of 1/4 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

The Present New Court of King's bench / with the Fittings of the Old Court - / Judges Bench / Judges Clerk. / Crown Clerks. / Clerk of the Rule Office. / Desk / Jury / New Court 30' 6" wide / Old Court 28 Feet / Students / Desk for King's Counsel / King's Counsel / Seat for King's Counsel dimensions given

Signed and dated

  • 1823 - 1824
    dated in accordance with known building campaign

Medium and dimensions

Pencil, wash, coloured washes of yellow, green and red, pen, on wove paper (297 x 357)

Hand

Sir John Soane RA (1753 - 1837), architect
Soane Office, draughtsman

Notes

The labels are written in by three distinct hands, one of which is Clearly Soane's. The coloured washes used to distinguish the seating arrangements of the Court follow those found on other related plans (e.g. SM 37/3/36). This plan, with its stated dimensions appears thematically related to concerns over accommodation and space, reflected in SM 53/7/3, though the latter's colour palette is different.

Level

Drawing

Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation. This catalogue of Soane’s designs for the New Law Courts was generously funded by The Worshipful Company of Mercers and The Pilgrim Trust.

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).