[418] Alternative design, New Law Courts, 14 June 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)
    - New Law Courts - Second Scheme, 1821-29 (345)
      - Northern Range - Court of King's Bench, 1823-29 (207)
        Select Committee Revisions, 1824-29 (79)
        Alternative Number Four: Forward Block, April-June 1824 (27)

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Reference number

SM 53/8/43

Purpose

[418] Alternative design, New Law Courts, 14 June 1824

Aspect

Exterior perspective of the New Law Courts, the New Palace Yard façade with corners articulated by a giant Corithian order, from the north west looking south east, unexecuted

Scale

to a scale

Inscribed

N^o. 12 (x 2)

Signed and dated

14/06/1824
14^th. June 1824 -

Medium and dimensions

Pencil, coloured washes including sepia, raw umber and Payne's grey, on wove paper (538 x 448)

Hand

Soane Office, draughtsman

Watermark

Weatherley & Lane / 1818

Notes

The façade to New Palace Yard is of seven bays with projecting corners and fenestration alternating between rectangular openings and Venetian windows. The elevation follows the Palladian variant given in SM 53/8/27 and SM 53/8/30, with its corners articulated by giant Corithian square pillasters, which support a projecting entablature ornamented with festoons and couchant royal supporters. The sculpted Royal Arms over the corner windows are omited, but the figures standing on the domed caps are included. Two square windows beneath the main architrave have been erased. The linking range to Westminster Hall is Gothic, closely echoing the latter's north façade.

This vantagepoint is taken from the junction of St Margaret's Street with Bridge Street, showing Garden Sqaure on the right and buildings on the north side of New Palace Yard on the left. Combined with the builders' detritus in the foreground, this is one of the more compelling perspective views. Closing in the compositions sides has also avoided showing the north façade of Westminster Hall.

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).