Record drawings of designs for the rotunda (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)
      - Rotunda, 1794-95 (30)

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Reference number

SM (6) volume 64/5 (7) volume 64/7 (8) volume 64/19

Purpose

Record drawings of designs for the rotunda (3)

Aspect

6 Sectional elevation; and half- plan with reflected ceiling plan 7 Elevation; and half-plan with reflected ceiling plan showing ouroboros motif in the ceiling 8 Sectional elevation; and half-plan

Scale

(6-8) to a scale

Inscribed

6,8 (pencil) The Rotunda / Bank of England 7 (pencil) The Rotunda. Bank of England.

Signed and dated

(6-8) datable to 1794

Hand

Soane office

Notes

Drawings 6 to 8 show a rotunda with semicircular arches surmounted by lunettes surrounded by wide architraves and an umbrella dome. Drawings 6 and 7 show alternative designs for the ceiling decoration and drawing 8 shows the masonry. The walls of the Rotunda were strengthened in 1795 by an additional stone casing. Taylor's Rotunda had been as tall as it was wide but Soane's encased Rotunda was about four feet less in diameter and the alcoves were similarly reduced.

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).