[3] Finished drawing for the principal (first) storey, 1771, as executed

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Robert and James Adam office drawings
- Town houses
  - London
    - Apsley House, Piccadilly, London: plans, elevations, section and designs for the interior, and an elevation for the gatehouse, for the 2nd Earl Bathurst, 1771-1779 (56)
      - Finished drawings including plans and a longitudinal section for the house, c1771, as executed (5)

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Reference number

SM Adam volume 32/102

Purpose

[3] Finished drawing for the principal (first) storey, 1771, as executed

Aspect

Plan of the principal (first) storey of a five-bay house with an irregular exterior wall to the east. The drawing rooms are positioned facing north, south and west, with the first drawing room formed with an apsidal end with niches. To the north-east there is a dressing room, bedchamber and servants room, with an irregular space to the far north-east containing a powdering room and staircase. The principal staircase, with a colonnaded screen, is set within an oval compartment. To the east, shown in pink wash, there is an additional building containing a laundry and wash house

Scale

bar scale of 2 inches to 10 feet

Inscribed

Plan of the Principle Story of Apsley House in Piccadilly – for the Lord Chancellor / Blank / Blank / Powdering Room / Chimney Wedgewood £00-00 / 3rd Drawing Room. Or Toillet Room / Statuary Marble Chimney with Scagliola – not exceeding £300-00 / Dressing Room / Chimney Marble and wood £10-00 / Bed chamber / chimney plain Marble £50-0-0 / Servants room / Laundry / Wash House / 2nd Drawing Room / Statuary Chimney Pew enscribed £200-0-0 / 1st Drawing Room / Chimney plain Marble Circular / £120-0-0 / Coachman’s Room and Hay Loft intended above Wash House & Laundary / Blank / Blank / Blank

Signed and dated

1771
Rob.t Adam Architect 1771

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil and coloured washes including black and pink within a single ruled border on laid paper (471 x 517)

Hand

Possibly
Office hand, possibly Joseph Bonomi or William Hamilton

Verso

Chancellor

Watermark

PVL

Notes

Adam volume 32/100 and 32/102 shows an additional three storey block of services rooms to the east of the main building, shown in pink, accessible via the servants’ hall. Lea speculates on the possibility that this part of the site was covered by a separate leasehold and likely part of a separate phase of development.

Adam volume 32/101 - 32/103 are not dated, but Lea highlights the probability they were completed after July 1771, when the plot was extended to the north and west following additional land leases made to Lord Apsley on the 13th July 1771. The plans show how the line of the south wall remains skew, and Lea suggests that this is perhaps due to the line of the park wall.

The first floor plan lists further chimneypieces for the Bedchamber, adjacent closet and powdering room. If these pieces were executed they do not survive the subsequent works by Wyatt (1828-1830).

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, Index p. 43
Harris, 2001(b), pp. 99-100
Lea, 2005, p.9
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.

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