Site progress drawings of passage, datable to late 1814 (4)

Explore Collections

You are here: CollectionsOnline / Site progress drawings of passage, datable to late 1814 (4)

Browse

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)

Use of images and copyright
Enlarge this Image

Print this image in A4 view

Reference number

SM (27) volume 70/3 (28) volume 70/4 (29) volume 70/5 (30) volume 70/6

Purpose

Site progress drawings of passage, datable to late 1814 (4)

Aspect

27 View showing arches of diagonal passage breaking through pre-existing masonry and brickwork of south west corner of Rotunda 28-29 View of timber beams supporting construction of new passage 30 View of temporary timber centring supporting construction of barrel vault and (verso) sections of bead mouldings

Inscribed

27 dimensions given

Signed and dated

(27-30) datable to late 1814

Hand

(27-30) George Basevi (1794-1845, pupil 1810-1816)

Notes

Soane sent his pupils out in pairs to make drawings of his buildings under construction at different stages. He believed the principles and practices of construction were invaluable to an architect and the knowledge could only be gained by experience and observation of the progress of building. Some of the drawings would have been drawn directly into the sketchbook on site, others would have been sketched on site and then finished formally at the office and pasted into the sketchbook later, as with drawing 29.

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. Some of the drawings within the sketchbook are signed by Basevi which would suggest that it belonged to him and all the drawings are in his hand.

The drawings reveal the passage to be built entirely of stone and brick, all incombustible materials. The timber beams and centring would be removed once the mortar has dried and the passage and arches are self-supporting.

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).