Working and site progress drawings for the new passage, 23 December 1814

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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)
    - 1814-1816 Rebuilding of existing offices and proposals for rebuilding street fronts (118)
      - Rotunda vestibule and Treasury, 1814-1815 (65)

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Reference number

SM (5) volume 70/7 (6) volume 70/1 (7) volume 70/2 (8) volume 70/9 (9) volume 70/8 (10) volume 70/11 (11) volume 70/14 (12) volume 70/13

Purpose

Working and site progress drawings for the new passage, 23 December 1814 - 4 January 1815 (8)

Aspect

5 Plan for passage on diagonal axis, as executed 6 Plan for passage into semicircular alcove of Rotunda 7 Interior perspective of arch within passage under construction, taken on the line A B of drawing 6 8 Plan for wall joints of passage at forty-five degree angle 9-10 Interior perspectives of arch within passage under construction, related to drawing 8 11 Plan for wall joints of passage at forty-five degree angle 12 Interior perspective of arch within passage under construction, taken on the line A B of drawing 11

Scale

(5-12) to scale

Inscribed

5 brickwork (twice), old work, dimensions given 6 a key of A B, dimensions given 7 as above, a key of A bar of iron over arch, stone (three times), dimensions given 8-9 water pipe, dimensions given 10 Entrance to the Rotunda 11 a key of A B, arches 12 as above, Entrance to the Rotunda, dimensions given

Signed and dated

(5-9) datable to late 1814 (see note below) (10) Friday Dec^r 23^rd 1814 (11) datable to January 1815 (12) Wednesday Jan^ry 4^th 1815

Hand

Soane office

Notes

Due to the extension of the Treasury and the pre-existing structure of the vestibule the new passage was a tight space and driven diagonally between the Treasury and Three per Cent Reduced Office into the semicircular alcove in the south west corner of the Rotunda. Drawing 5 clearly shows the diagonal route of the passage.

Drawings 8-10 and 11-12 show the point at which the passage turns at a forty-five degree angle. The views show the structure to be built of brick and stone with arches leading the passage into the diagonal route. The original vestibule could not be knocked down completely because it was integrated with other buildings. Thus the diagonal passage had to be built by breaking through the existing masonry and brickwork of the south west corner of the Rotunda.

The drawings are in an octavo sketchbook inscribed on the first page; Sketches of the New Entrance / to the Rotunda at the Bank / from the Pay Hall Court / made during the progress of / the Works in the year 1814-1815. The drawings seem to be ordered chronologically within the volume which means drawings 5-9 can be dated to late 1814 as they appear before drawing 10 dated Dec^r 23^rd 1814.

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).