[26] Preliminary survey, Westminster Hall, 24 April 1824

Explore Collections

You are here: CollectionsOnline / [26] Preliminary survey, Westminster Hall, 24 April 1824

Browse

Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Office of Works
  - London: Palace of Westminster: The New Law Courts, surveys and designs, 1820-32 (507)
    - Survey Drawings - Previously Extant Buildings, 1820-23 (122)
      - Courts & Offices Surveys (110)
        Westminster Hall, 1822-26 (24)

Use of images and copyright
Enlarge this Image

Print this image in A4 view

Reference number

SM Vol 48/14

Purpose

[26] Preliminary survey, Westminster Hall, 24 April 1824

Aspect

Detail elevations and moulding profiles of a niche canopy, and base with plinth frieze on the north façade of Westminster Hall

Scale

not to scale

Inscribed

Too high / x (x 2) / Plan / Inner square dimensions given

Signed and dated

24/04/1824
April 1824
written over an erasure Westminster Hall / April 1824.

Medium and dimensions

Pencil, on wove paper bound into volume (211 x 281)

Hand

Stephen Burchell (1806 - c.1843), draughtsman
The Day Book entry for 24 April 1824 records that Stephen Burchell was engaged in Sketching parts of Westminster / Hall.

Notes

This series of survey drawings (SM Vol 54/13 - 16; 18 - 19) may have been prepared in response to the Select Committee's criticism of the New Law Courts, and their junction with the north façade of Westminster Hall. This drawing records the carved details of niche canopies, micro-architectural features and the cusped shield frieze as restored by Soane from 1819 - 1823. Despite the intention of archaeological exactness, there are characteristics in the treatment of certain details (i.e. the foliate crockets) which mark the stonework as belonging to the early nineteenth century. Soane famously installed four pedestals from these niches onto the façade of N^o. 13, Lincoln's Inn Fields, and reassembled other fragments from the Old Palace of Westminster within the Monk's Yard to the rear of N^o. 14, Lincoln's Inn Fields.

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).