Drawing 1 (dated March 1783) has minimal Doric capitals with retracted necking, the tympanum left bare and there is a central chimney. As with drawings 2 and 3 it has been attributed to Robert Baldwin. The plan (drawing 2) having the shaded, three-dimensional rendering found in his work and the inscriptions are in his hand. The elevation (drawing 3) is unfinished - there is no chimney, the panels of the door and glazing bars to the windows incomplete so that this may be a study for a more finished drawing or simply, a presentation drawing that did not work out - competent but rather lifeless. Drawing 4 is severely damaged but may have been the 'Design for a dairy' exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1783. Drawing 5 is a working drawing by Soane, drawing 6 a slight plan and sketchy perspective also by Soane. Drawing 7 was previously catalogued as for Lees Court, Kent, 1789 (Concise Catalogue, 75/1/21-27) but is undoubtedly for Hamels. The perspective is poorly drawn, in design it relates to drawing 3, that is, without a chimney and with similar capitals, and a butter churn in the tympanum. However, the eaves are deeper than in other drawings and, interestingly, the walls are shown as brick with brick lintels to the windows. Other drawings give no indication of building materials that are mentioned by Soane in his notebook (SNB 7, 5 May 1783) as set with small stones, and as rough-casted in his Plans, elevations and sections (1788, plate 4). Thus drawing 7, despite the poor draughtmanship, was made by a designer's hand - that is, by Soane.

The first of these three drawings (that is, drawing 1 - together with drawings 5 and 6) is in a vellum-bound volume (SM volume 41) entitled on the cover 'Precedents / In Architecture / 1784' compiled during Soane's early years of practice as a record book, 1783-88. Drawings 2 and 3 were stuck into an album (SM volume 68) inscribed on the title page: 'Designs for Various Buildings / by / John Soane, Architect 1789-1794' - in fact, the designs date from 1783 to 1794.

There are also, in Soane's personal scrapbook, unidentified and un-dated preliminary and sketch designs for a cottage in a primitive, rustic style as well as a sketch design for a dairy with a tiled or slated roof, reeded columns and with a decorative butter churn tablet that may possibly be an early design for Hammels, later discarded. See Original Sketches / Miscellaneous / Architectural / Subjects': album with 195 drawings by Soane, Dance, Holland and others, dated c.1757 to 1818; volume 42/137-138-139 Preliminary and sketch designs for a cottage in a primitive, rustic style, and Preliminary design for a dairy, n.d.

See also a perspective of the Dairy design made for Soane's Royal Academy lectures (SM 13/7/10), reproduced in Richardson and Stevens (op.cit.) catalogue 39.

D.Stroud, Sir John Soane, architect, 2nd ed. 1996, pp.63, 119: P.du Prey, John Soane: the making of an architect, 1982, pp.231, 249, 251-2, 257, 264; P.Dean, Sir John Soane and the country estate, 1999, p.165; P.Dean, 'Early practice; country houses and the primitive', catalogue 38-9 in M.Richardson and M.Stevens, John Soane architect: master of Space and light, 1999.

Group

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

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