Designs for cellar and foundations, as executed (3)

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Bank of England
  - Bank of England, City of London for the Governor and Company of the Bank of England, 1788-1834 (1352)
    - 1791-1801 Rebuilding of offices in the east wing and north-east extension (430)
      - Bank Stock Office, 1791-1793 (73)
        Preliminary and realised designs for cellar, c. 1792 (6)

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Reference number

SM (20) volume 74/12 (21) volume 74/48 (22) volume 74/37

Purpose

Designs for cellar and foundations, as executed (3)

Aspect

20 Longitudinal Section on the Line A B on Plan of Office looking east 21 Longitudinal Section on the Line C D to Plan of Office looking west 22 Transverse Section on the Line E F looking north

Scale

(20-22) bar scale of 1/3 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

20 as above, Bank Stock Office, a key A B C D E F G H I K L M N O P Q, dimensions given 21 as above, a key A B E F G H I K L M N O P Q, dimensions given 22 as above, Bank Stock Office, a key A B C D E F G H I K L M N O P Q

Signed and dated

(20-22) datable to 1792

Medium and dimensions

(20-22) Pen, pale red ink, sepia, yellow ochre, brown madder and pale blue washes, partly pricked for transfer on wove paper with one fold mark (525 x 647, 509 x 644, 522 x 648)

Hand

(20-22) attributed to William Lodder (assistant 1789-?) or Charles Ebdon (assistant 1791-1792)

Notes

Drawings 20-22 are three of a set of related drawings along with drawings 28-29 and 45, showing the structure, dimensions and decoration of the Bank Stock Office, as executed. Drawing 20 is looking towards the east and cut through a plane along the centre-aisle of the hall, and drawing 21 is looking towards the west and cut through a plane along the side-aisle of the hall. The three drawings show the brick and stone vaulting of the hall and the underlying cellar. They also accurately show the elevations of the side-aisles and east, west and north walls.
Beneath the flooring of drawing 20 the ducts of the heating system can be seen in the centre and to the right the timber framing of the floor can be seen. The inverted segmental arches at the bottom of the three drawings make up the base layer of the foundation.
In drawings 21 and 22 particular attention is paid to the structure of the piers and the various courses in the vaulting of bricks and hollow-cone pots, whereas drawing 21 focuses more on the cellar foundations.
Significantly drawing 21 shows the lateral arches to have been constructed as segmental arches, but given semi-circular profiles by extending the line of the arch beneath the projecting impost bricks. Soane was less concerned with expressing structure than achieving just the right aesthetic balance. Set into these impost blocks, as well as the clerestory ones above, are iron tie rods, shown as thin, blue rectangles, similarly shown in drawings 28-29.
In the three drawings there appear jointed segments of rods or piping on the walls beneath the central arch, whose function is unclear (and were unrealised), but may be related to drains seen in the plan of the roof (see drawing 28).
Drawing 22 shows the contrast between the open framing of the centre-aisle floor and the solid flooring beneath the side-aisles to support the weight of the piers (see drawing 45). Above the grilled door in the north wall of the cellar is the fireplace, part of the heating system for the hall (see drawing 45).

Literature

(21) D. Abramson, Building the Bank of England: money, architecture, society 1694-1942, 2005, p.107 (22) E. Schumann-Bacia, John Soane and the Bank of England, 1991, p. 57, ill. 43

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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