[294] Working drawing, New Law Courts, c 1823

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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)
        Original Scheme, 1823-26 (59)
        Design drawings, 1823-26 (27)

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Reference number

SM 69/7/1/r/a

Purpose

[294] Working drawing, New Law Courts, c 1823 - 1824

Aspect

Elevation of the pavillon tower and flanking range to The Stone Building, as executed, with preliminary revisions (in pencil)

Scale

to a scale

Signed and dated

c 1823 - 1824
dated in accordance with known building campaign

Medium and dimensions

Pencil, pen, pricked for transfer on wove paper (337 x 117)

Hand

Soane Office

Notes

Contrary to Summerson's reading, and given the scale of this drawing, it is likely to represent Soane's design for completing The Stone Building's façade to St Margaret's Street as an integral part of the New Law Courts. Conversely, Summerson postulated this was a survey drawing (see note enclosed with this drawing). The model for this design was provided by the existing flanking range and pavilion tower, executed to John Vardy's design, and standing south of the building's central block between St Margaret's Street and Old Palace Yard. Revisions (in pencil) suggest raising the head of the arch, making it stilted, and increasing the size of the keystone so it breaks into the course above. While the former is characteristically Soanian, the latter motif echoes Vanbrugh. This ground-floor arch acted as the entrance to the Court of King's Bench.

Literature

Sawyer, 1999: p 539, footnote 1591

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).