Record drawings by J.M. Gandy of the Volunteers' Dinner in the Four Per Cent Office, 1799-1801 (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)
      - Four Per Cent Office, 1793-97 (11)

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Reference number

SM (7) volume 69/34 (8) 1/8/7 (9) volume 75/95

Purpose

Record drawings by J.M. Gandy of the Volunteers' Dinner in the Four Per Cent Office, 1799-1801 (3)

Aspect

7 Rough interior view showing the Four Per Cent Office with uniformed men sitting at tables running the length of the central hall and in the northern arms, with serving tables in the southern arms; a stove is in the centre of the hall; with candles around the walls and on the central stove 8 Interior view as in drawing 7 9 Interior view as in drawing 7 and including two women and a child standing in the foreground

Inscribed

7 View of the Dividend Pay Office. Bank of England 8 (Bailey) View of the Consols Dividend Office

Signed and dated

(7) Sep^r 10 1799 (9) Feb^ry18^th 1801

Medium and dimensions

[Unknown Value in Data]

Hand

(7-9) Joseph Michael Gandy (1771-1843, assistant in Soane office 1798-1801)

Watermark

(8) J Whatman 1794

Notes

The Bank Volunteer Corps was assembled in May 1798. On 2 September 1799, after the Regiment was presented with its colours at Lord's Cricket Ground, a dinner was given in the Rotunda. It was supplied by Birch's at a cost of £674 7s. 5d.

The country had been at war with France for over five years when Thomas Raikes, Governor of the Bank, submitted a proposal for arming staff to protect the bank. A corps of 450 clerks was led by Field Officers and Captains chosen from among the Directors and Lieutenants and Ensigns from the staff. On 24 May the Military Committee reported that 503 clerks had signed a declaration agreeing to serve in a volunteer regiment. The men would be 'clothed in Scarlet with Green facings, and white Kerseymere Waistcoats and Breeches'. Among the officers chosen, John Soane was appointed Quartermaster. In May 1802 the Regiment was disbanded after the Treaty of Amiens was signed. When war broke out again, the Corps was reinstated in May 1803 and continued to serve the Bank until 1 July 1814.

See also drawings SM volume 69/33, 9/2/1b and volume 75/94, drawings 26 to 28 in scheme 2:3, for drawings of the Volunteers Dinner in the Rotunda.

Literature

(8) F. Sands, Fanciful Figures: people in architectural drawings, 2024, p. 37

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.

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).