Design for alterations to the Governor's Room, June 1793 (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)
    - 1788-1793 Initial assessment of existing buildings and minor alterations (73)
      - Minor alterations: Armoury, stoves, Governor's Room and Garden Court, 1788-93 (8)

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Reference number

SM (6) volume 75/69 (7) volume 75/70 (8) volume 75/71

Purpose

Design for alterations to the Governor's Room, June 1793 (3)

Aspect

6 Plan with laid-out wall elevations showing a square room with a cross-vaulted ceiling supported at four corners by unornamented columns; at two opposite sides of the room wall, the elevations consist of a clerestory window with two doorways below, one blind and one functional; (verso, pencil) elevation of a building with a central segmental arched chamber surmounted by a wide lantern and flanked by two shallow arms 7 Plan with laid out wall elevations showing roof timbers and interior of square room with segmental arches on all four sides (possibly a cross vault), clerestory windows each centred on three walls, with two entrances into the room and (pencil) two added; rough (pencil) details of moulding; (verso, pencil) copy of elevation on verso of drawing 1 8 Plan with laid out wall elevations showing a square room with segmental arches on all four sides (possibly a cross vault) and on each of two walls a clerestory window over two doorways, one blind and one functional; (verso) elevation as in verso of drawings 1 and 2

Scale

(6-8) bar scale

Inscribed

6 The Bank of England, Plan & Section of the Intended 8 (pencil) Meeting Rail to the Center only, (feint pencil) Trusses in Wood or Metal / Architrave to Doors / Dado / Finish to Window Jamb

Signed and dated

(6) Bank of England June 5^th 1793 (8) June 6^th 1793

Hand

Soane office

Notes

In 16 April 1793, Soane's plan was accepted for a new door between the Governor's Room and the Committee Room. Drawings 6 to 8, made in June 1793 (on the versos of re-used drawings) are show the Governor's Room in relation to the new doorway.

The pencil elevations on the verso of each of the drawings show designs for a banking hall. The designs have segmental arches, as in the Bank Stock Office, but they also show a peripteral lantern as included in the Four Per Cent Office (see separate schemes). The drawings accurately show the Bank Stock Office's dimensions (see SM volume 74/29, 74/21 and 74/11, drawings 17 to 19 in scheme 2:1). These drawings are probably preliminary designs for the Four Per Cent Office, dating from 1793.

John Britton wrote in 1814 that the Governor's Room was painted a red colour and had an 'intersected ceiling, with semicircular windows near the top. The chimney-piecce is of statuary marble, and above it is a very large mirror; against the opposite wall is a fine painting by Morland, of the Bank, Bank-buildings, Cornhill, and Royal Exchange, from an interesting point of view near the Mansion House.'(Britton)

Literature

J. Britton, The beauties of England and Wales: or, Delineations, topographical, historical, and descriptive, of each county, Volume X, Part 1, 1814, p. 561.

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).