Scale
bar scale of 1/4 inch to 1 foot
Inscribed
Plan of part of the New Law Courts at Westminster, as designed in May & June 1823. / Feet / The Court of Exchequer. / The Court of Common Pleas. / The Court of Equity. dimensions given (upper flyer) 37. / Court of King’s Bench. dimensions given (lower flyer) 38
Signed and dated
- 29/05/1823
L[incolns] .I[nn] .F[ields]. / 29 May / 1823
4th. June 1823 (upper flyer)
3rd. June 1823 (lower flyer)
Medium and dimensions
Pencil, wash, coloured washes of buff, pink and blue, pen, pink pen, pricked for transfer on wove paper (896 x 631); uppermost flyer (301 x 532); lowermost flyer (300 x 542)
Hand
Possibly Stephen Burchell (1806 - c.1843), draughtsman
The Day Book entry for 29 May 1823 notes that Stephen Burchell was About the drawings of the New Courts at Westminster.
Possibly Edward Foxhall (1793 - 1862), draughtsman
The Day Book entry for 29 May 1823 notes that Edward Foxhall was About the drawings of the New Courts at Westminster. The Day Book entries for 3-4 June 1823 both record that the same draughtsman was About a Plan of the New Courts at Westminster, implying that he executed the flyers.
Notes
The vestibule to the Court of King’s Bench from Westminster Hall has pencil sketches for adding two symmetrical ancillary spaces either side of the entrance; one is a water closet. The adjacent staircase has also been sketched over. There are dashed diagonal survey lines (with measurements) relating to the northernmost buttress of Westminster Hall and the staircase turret on the hall’s north-western tower. The lower flyer (dated 3 June 1823) shows different internal provisions for water closets and staircases, with groined ceilings indicated. The upper flyer (dated 4 June 1823) shows two entrances from New Palace Yard positioned on the curved corners. Both have steps across the basement gulley and art articulated with columns. The anciliary spaces behind the New Palace Yard façade are again cofigured differently. Both flyers show the basement gullies and the canopy over the King's Bench tribunal is shown in dashed line. The groin vaults of The Stone Building's central block are also shown by this method.
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.
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
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