Explore Collections Explore The Collections
You are here: CollectionsOnline  /  [9] Design and working drawing for the secondary staircase, water closet and maid's closet in the west courtyard, April 1791

Browse

  • image Image 1 for SM 6/1/12 recto and verso
  • image Image 2 for SM 6/1/12 recto and verso
Use of images and copyright
Enlarge this Image
Print this image in A4 view  (icon indicating printer link)
  • image Image 1 for SM 6/1/12 recto and verso
  • image Image 2 for SM 6/1/12 recto and verso

Reference number

SM 6/1/12 recto and verso

Purpose

[9] Design and working drawing for the secondary staircase, water closet and maid's closet in the west courtyard, April 1791

Aspect

Plan of part of the Hall Floor; Plan of part of the Basement Floor; detail of the base of staircase railing; (verso) section of the drawing room

Scale

1/8 inch to 1 foot, approximately; (verso) bar scale of 1/4 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

as above, The Earl of Hardwicke, Wimple, ground floor plan labelled do not make / this door into / the room until / directed, Water Closet, Maids / Closet, staircase risers numbered 1 to 6, dimensions given and lettered A (twice), B (twice, D to F corresponding to key: AB leave an Indent of 9 Inches wide at BB / and then put the Windows in the / Center of the spaces between AB & BA // CD Observe the floors of these closets are six / steps above the level of the Hall floor // EF The space between these letters is (I believe / 25 feet) take 12 feet for the staircase and 18 Inches / the Wall and then the remainder is to be divided equally between / the Water Closet & Maid's closet, basement floor plan labelled Passage, Skylight, dimensions given, (pencil) Red (twice), lettered A, K (twice), L corresponding to key: A The Center of the Window above / determines the Center of this door // K.K. determines the situation of the door L, The Earl of Hardwicke, Wimpole; (verso) Section on the line EF

Signed and dated

  • April 1791
    April 1791, Copy Augt 4: 1791; (verso) April 25 1791
  • 4 August 1791
    April 1791, Copy Augt 4: 1791; (verso) April 25 1791
  • 25 April 1791
    April 1791, Copy Augt 4: 1791; (verso) April 25 1791

Medium and dimensions

pen and black, pink and yellow washes, brown pen, on laid paper with one fold mark (562 x 334)

Hand

SOANE, Sir John (1754--1837), architect
Soane and Thomas Chawner (1774-1851, pupil 1788-1794) and David Laing (1774-1856, pupil Jan 1790- ; June 1796)
Thomas Chawner (1774 - 1851), draughtsman
Soane and Thomas Chawner (1774-1851, pupil 1788-1794) and David Laing (1774-1856, pupil Jan 1790- ; June 1796)
Laing, David (1774--1856), draughtsman
Soane and Thomas Chawner (1774-1851, pupil 1788-1794) and David Laing (1774-1856, pupil Jan 1790- ; June 1796)

Notes

Drawing 9 is a copy of a working drawing sent by post to Mr Provis on 4 August 1791. The original design, however, was made in April 1791.

The addition consists of a Portland stone staircase, a maid's closet and two water closets. It occupies most of the west courtyard, with a small lightwell remaining from the ground floor to shed light into the ground floor closets and through a skylight of the basement water closet.

Pink wash in drawing 9 indicates the new building work, therefore 'Red' has been inscribed on part of the plan as a correction to the drawing. Yellow indicates timber, which is used in the partitions enclosing the water closets.

The verso of drawing 9 has a section in Soane's hand made in April 1791 and showing the north arm of the drawing room looking south. Rather than the segmental barrel vault of earlier designs (drawing 6), the vault is on a semicircular arch (as in drawing 7).

Level

Drawing

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

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).