[387] Revised design, Court of King's Bench, 13 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)
    - 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 Three: Polygonal Corner Turret, April 1824 (8)

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Reference number

SM 53/3/57

Purpose

[387] Revised design, Court of King's Bench, 13 April 1824

Aspect

Plan of the main (ground) floor of the New Law Courts, with the original groundplan to New Palace Yard shown (in grey) and proposed reductions in the building's footprint and revisions to ancillary accommodation indicated (in pink), with an octagonal corner turret, unexecuted

Scale

to a scale

Inscribed

Copy / Attorneys / The Court of King’s Bench / 40 feet by 20 feet / Tribunal / Remark M^r. S[oane]’s Court is 36 by 30 / Entrance / for / Counsel & / Juries / The Exche[quer] / Passage / The Lord. C[hief]. Justice / of the K[ing’s]. B[ench]’s / Retiring Room / 20 feet by 17 feet / The Court of Equity / Attendants on / The Lord Chief Justice / Hall of / Entrance / for My Lords the Judges / 17 feet Diam[ete]^r. / The Door to / The Street / This Staircase / would be better / lighted by a / Window here / Remark / A. Porch with / another public / Entrance might / be made here if / necessary_ / The Bail Court / 30 feet long by 18 feet / Remark M^r. S[oane]'s. Court is 21 by 27 / N[ota]. B[ene]. The width may be increased to / 20 feet or even to 25f^t. by allowing a / Passage thro’[ugh] one end of it as in / M^r. S[oane].s Plan.

Signed and dated

13/04/1824
April. 13. 1824.

Medium and dimensions

Pencil, wash, pink wash, pen, red pen, pricked for transfer on wove paper (242 x 377)

Notes

The drawing bears numerous annotations and Remarks in a miniscule, neat hand which does not appear to be associated with the Soane Office. The annotations compare the proposed reductions in accommodation to those originally executed by Soane (referred to as M^r. S.). The sheet has been tightly cropped along its right and upper edges, presumably to preserve the only part of the plan which was effected by these proposals.

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).