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  • image SM volume 77/57

Reference number

SM volume 77/57

Purpose

[42] Design, 24 August 1809

Aspect

Chelsea Hospital / Plan of the Ground Floor of a / design for a new Infirmary / according to the original outline presented to / the Lords & other Commiss[or]s for managing the affairs of / Chelsea Hospital / in April last. / by John Soane R.A.

Scale

bar scale

Inscribed

as above, labelled No 2, NB: In this design the wards are all / separated and the rooms between / are applied to the use of the nurses etc / and the whole is proposed to be incombustible, The Ground floor is proposed to be raised / 3 steps above the level of the present Terrace, to / give the least possible inconvenience in removing / the sick from the wards into the Infirmary . _ / On this floor is a Ward entirely detached for foul Patients and also 7 other Wards separate & / distinct from each other the whole calculated, / to accomodate 42 Patients; each ward has / a through draught of air from the River / with other means of ventilation, there are / also rooms for the Physician, Surgeon, Nurse, Helpers and other necessary accommodations / such as Washouse, Water Closets, Sinks / places for Coals etc ---, Part of the original / Building lately pulled / down, proposed to be / rebuilt for / a residence / for the Physician, Whitster's House / Reservoir, artificers Sheds etc, Carriage Way etc, Part of Gordons Wall, Foul Ward / for 6 Patients, Ward / for four / patients (four times), Lobby, washouse, Corridor (five times), nurse (twice), Ward for 8 Patients (twice), apothecary, Physician, Staircase, Surgeon, Lobby, Ward / for four / Patients, Entrance / Hall, Dead / House, Lodge, The present Entrance / into the Garden, mihi turpe relinqui est

Signed and dated

  • John Soane, architect, Lincolns Inn Fields, Copy delivered / August 24 1809

Hand

Soane office

Watermark

Fellows 1804

Notes

This drawing, SM volume 77/58, SM volume 77/54 and SM volume 77/55 all show different floors of same building, with wards, matron's kitchen and other rooms all laid out. The building separated on the end is presumably still intended as a 'foul ward'.

The 'Reservoir' referred to in the inscription to this drawing probably indicates a body of water kept (for use in bleaching and washing) by the Whitster, particularly given the close proximity of the labels referring to each.

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).