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  • image SM 77/1/34

Reference number

SM 77/1/34

Purpose

[20] Working drawing for roof to the Great Hall/saloon, 1790

Aspect

A Plan of the lead Covering to great Hall and section of roof truss

Scale

full size

Inscribed

as above, Chillington, labelled Servants Hall Roof, Old Wall, note to section: This Section is as the principal Beams AA / are trussed. the curve line is the form of the Cieling / under those two Beams // I have in consequence of the old wall being very bad / next the Stairs cut thro' it & work'd up the new Pier mark'd / L on the Plan which will bear one end of a trussed / Timber which Timber will carry the ends of 2 Pair of / principal Rafters and labelled Old Wall, Bed Room &c over / Servants Hall

Signed and dated

  • 27 May 1790
    Laing May 27 1790

Medium and dimensions

Pen, sepia, yellow and pink washes, shaded, pricked for transfer on thin laid paper (685 x 555)

Hand

Laing, David (1774--1856), draughtsman
David Laing (pupil 8 January 1790-96)

Notes

David Laing (1774-1856) signed this copy of a drawing, made barely five months after he began his pupilage, which was not the usual practice within Soane's office. The 'I' of the note about working up 'the new Pier' came from the carpenter'. Laing's entry in H. Colvin, Biographical dictionary of British architects 1600-1840, 2008, shows that he was the son of a 'cork cutter' of Tower Street, London. After completing his articles, Laing set up in practice for himself and was doing very well, designing the London Custom House in 1817 with 'an elegant neo-classical design of considerable merit'. Unfortunately, through either gross incompetence or collusion, part of the facade collapsed in 1825 and Laing 'had difficulty obtaining any further commissions'.

Level

Drawing

Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation

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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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