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

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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)

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Reference number

SM Vol 54/15

Purpose

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

Aspect

Elevation of the north gable pinnacle of Westminster Hall, with quarter section through the latter

Scale

not to scale

Inscribed

Part of the North Front / of / Westminster Hall dimensions given

Signed and dated

24/04/1824
April 1824

Medium and dimensions

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

Hand

Stephen Burchell (1806 - c.1843), draughtsman
The Day Book entry for 24 April 1824 notes that Stephen Burchell was 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. The substantial north gable pinnacle was restored by Soane to an approximation of its mediaeval appearance during his restoration of Westminster Hall from 1819 - 1823. Its former appearance is recorded in a drawing by William Capon, dated to 1793 (reproduced in H.K.W., vol. iv, pt 2 (1982): plate 28). Despite Soane's archaeological intent, there are numerous details which characterise this work as belonging to the early nineteenth-century; in regard to this example, the weak association between the ogee canopies and the spirelet.

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).