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Variant designs for the entrance hall, showing the introduction of semicircular-plan alcoves (3)

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Drawings 147 and 149 show the development of the entrance hall design, with alterations made by Soane in pencil and pen included in the subsequent drawing. The first of the series is drawing 147. Soane visited Bentley Priory on the 28 April, krpobably accompanied by these drawings.

Drawing 147 has been altered by Soane in rough pen to have rounded alcoves flanking the entrance hall rather than square or canted alcoves in other designs. Pencil alterations to drawing 147 also show a preliminary design for a staircase at the south-east corner of the entrance hall.

Drawing 148 includes the alterations made to drawing 147 and has further modifications in red pen and pencil to include a starfish ceiling and alcoves on the stairwell. The front elevation is also altered, showing alcoves flanking the main door; this change is included in drawing 149.

Drawing 149 is dated 1799 and shows the final design. It appears to be a copy, with modifications, of drawing 148. The drawing shows the built design and resembles a later presentation drawing of the entrance hall (drawing 174).

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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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Contents of Variant designs for the entrance hall, showing the introduction of semicircular-plan alcoves (3)