Preliminary designs for cellar (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 (23) volume 74/5 (24) volume 74/4 (25) volume 74/3

Purpose

Preliminary designs for cellar (3)

Aspect

23 Plan & [laid-out] Sections of Cellar under the Bank Stock Office 24 Plan [and laid-out sections] of the Cellar under the Bank Office and (verso) two rough plans, related to the recto, for pier and wall buttressing 25 Plan and [laid-out] Section on the line A B, Section on the line C D, Section on the line E F

Scale

(23-25) bar scale of 1/5 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

23 as above, The Bank of England, dimensions and (pencil) calculations given and (verso) B Stock Office / Plan and Sections of Cellar 24 as above, The Bank of England, dimensions and (pencil) calculations given and (verso) Basement story / under the / Bank Stock Office, miscellaneous dimensions and financial calculations given 25 as above, The Bank of England, Cellar under Bank Stock Office, a key A B C D E F, with dimensions given

Signed and dated

(23-25) datable to 1792

Medium and dimensions

(23) Pen, pencil, pale red ink and sepia wash, partly pricked for transfer on wove paper with four fold marks (535 x 637) (24) pen, pencil, pale red ink and sepia wash on wove paper with six fold marks (513 x 584) (25) pen, pencil, pale red ink, sepia and yellow ochre washes, partly pricked for transfer on wove paper with four fold marks (495 x 590)

Hand

Soane office

Notes

Drawings 23 and 24 show the cellar divided into three aisles, corresponding to the hall above, and four cross-vaulted bays. Corner doors connect the centre-aisle to what are essentially side rooms, as in the executed design (see drawing 12).
It is likely that drawing 23 is an early scheme for renovating Taylor's cellar by reducing the side aisles from seven to four bays, corresponding to Soane's simplification of Taylor's seven-bay hall above. Sketches on the buttresses flanking the south door, probably in Soane's hand, show an idea to square off the projections.
On drawing 24 there are sketches by Soane for additional wall buttresses turning the side aisles into seven-bay spaces, as executed (see drawing 18), and probably as Taylor originally had it to correspond to his seven-bay hall above. The earlier configuration of the cellar seen in drawing 23 was probably adandoned for reasons of economy.
Drawing 25 is closest to the design of the cellar as executed (see drawings 17-18, 22), with a four-bay centre aisle and seven-bay side aisles linked by corner openings. This is probably the original configuration of the existing cellar built by Taylor, except that this drawing also shows additional unexecuted openings between the centre and side aisles. Sketches in the left bay of the east-west section propose to lower the height of the side-vaulting to strengthen it for carrying the new hall.

Level

Drawing

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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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