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  • image SM (3) 9/2/12
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Reference number

SM (3) 9/2/12

Purpose

Presentation drawing of the Bank, including the proposed extension, April 1802

Aspect

3 Ground plan of the Bank, showing the proposed design and the existing buildings

Scale

(3) bar scale

Inscribed

3 The Bank of England, (Soane) Bank April 8th 1802 / Design submitted to the Committee of Building, who ordered / as follows, Mr Govr / Mr Dep / Sir Rd Neave / Mr Darell / Mr S Bosanquet / Mr Saml Thornton / Mr Winthrop, and plan labelled (Soane): Committee / room, Court Room, Bank Note / Printing office / on the first floor / & / additional / waiting & / Committee Rooms / under, The / Drawing / office, Accomptants office / & / Rooms under for Books / & / Rooms over, Accompts Office, Disct Office, Cash book, Anteroom / to / Disct Office, Governors / room, Deputy / Governor, Vestibule, Mr Newlands / Hall, Anti-room, Mr Newland / Room, Bullion Court, Mr Newlands / present office to / be laid into the / Pay Hall, The Hall, Paved Court, Treasury, addition / to / Treasury, Bullion office, Interior Office, Lothbury Court, Lothbury, The Library, Transfer Office (twice), Bank Stock, (pencil, Soane) The Garden, 3 per Cent / red, Cheque / Office, Pay Hall

Signed and dated

  • (submitted 8 April 1802, as above) and (Bailey) Lincolns Inn Fields / April 1805

Hand

Soane office and Soane

Notes

The inscriptions on drawing 3 show that Soane was not only designing a new wing but also making alterations to offices throughout the Bank. The plan shows suggestions for altering the offices around the Bullion Court. The Bullion Office was expanded and rebuilt 1806-1808. 'Mr Newland' refers to Abraham Newland, the Chief Cashier of the Bank from 1778 to 1807. His office was enlarged to the east, presumably at the suggestion of the directors on the (approved) presentation of this drawing in April 1802.

Only a preliminary design for the north-west offices is shown in drawing 3. Elongated rectangular buildings surround two courtyards and are connected by a long corridor extending from north to south. The corridor leads from the directors' offices through the Accountants Office, passing through loggias in both courts. Without an entrance on Princes Street, the new wing is only accessible from the directors' offices.

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).