Alternative designs, record drawing and working drawing for the west side of the Waiting Room Court, some dated August to September 1803 and January 1804 (9)

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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)
    - 1799-1810 Expansions north-west and rebuilding of existing offices (487)
      - First phase of north-west extension: Waiting Room Court, Accountants Office and Doric Vestibule, 1801-1804 (111)

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Reference number

SM (68) volume 73/31 (69) volume 75/63 (70) volume 72/43 (71) volume 72/44 (72) volume 75/66 (73) volume 73/34 (74) volume 72/53 (75) volume 73/33 (76) volume 75/62

Purpose

Alternative designs, record drawing and working drawing for the west side of the Waiting Room Court, some dated August to September 1803 and January 1804 (9)

Aspect

68 Section 69 Section 70 Section; and rough details 71 Section 72 Section 73 Elevation 74 Shaded elevation of the west side; and wall plan 75 Elevation of the west side; rough elevation of the attic; and part-wall plan 76 Elevation of the centre of the west side; wall plan; and details of mouldings

Scale

(68, 73, 75-76) bar scale (69-72, 74) to a scale

Inscribed

68 The Bank, Colonade (sic) Court, elevation labelled (Soane, pencil): These wind[ows]: / to be as / high as / the Cieling / will admit and dimensions given 69 The Bank of England, -door (sheet trimmed), (Bailey) Design for the West side of the "Colonnade Court" and (Soane) dimensions given 70 (Soane) Qy o- bel-- (illegible) / or / neither, Stone / arch, Chain, The stone plaster to be / put together as an / arch, 2 courses of Cones over the Column / & one course between and dimensions given 71 (Soane) Ridge and Center, Chain 72 The Bank of England, Section through the "Waiting Room Court" (looking West) 73 (Soane) sq[ua]re and dimensions of column 74 equal 75 (Soane) Final and dimensions given 76 Final, The Bank, Design for the Centre of the West side of "Waiting Room Court", elevation labelled (Soane) NB This floor is determined / by the level of the / Bank Note Printing / Office; and / NB this very material to attend / to the level of the floor / the dimension of 13:5½ has / been given to me as the / correct height - but I / doubt the correctness / greatly, Floor (twice), Col^m / not to / be flat, NB the space between the / columns to be as / near 4:9 or as will / best bring in the modiglian (modillion) regularly, a wording to the proposition shewn in the drawing at large, see below, pane (twice), 3 panes, lettered A to H, Square, Full Size

Signed and dated

(68) Lincolns Inn Fields / Aug^st 30^th 1803 (70) Sep^r5: 1803, Sep 14: 1803, Sep 16: 1803 (71) Sep: 8: 1803 (three times) (73) Jan: 7: 1804 (76) Sep: 27: 1803

Hand

(68-70, 73, 75) Soane office and Soane (72, 74) Soane office

Watermark

(70-72) I Taylor 1801 (74) J Whatman 1801

Notes

Drawings 69 to 76 show the west façade of the Court as executed aside from the ornamentation and attic. The drawings show variant designs, all of them having a balustrade and a central attic element aligned with the attached columns. The central attic pedestal consists of a variation of fluted pilasters capped by antefixes, with usually an ornamented panel between the pilasters. Drawing 75 includes a scrolled acroterion crowning this attic panel.

The attached columns are similar to the design shown in drawings 41 to 47 but the columns have been doubled in height. Drawing 68, an intermediary between these two designs, has two storeys of columns.

Drawing 70 shows ornamentation added to the façade, including caducei and an attic panel, as well as bracketed pediments crowning the windows. The inscriptions also concern the construction of the segmental arched ceiling of the Accountant's Office, consisting of courses of hollow cones anchored by stones secured with iron chains at the bases of the arch. As drawings 88 and 89 show, the arched ceiling of the Accountants Office was protected by a separate roof. This was a wise choice, as Soane's earlier employment of cone roof construction, in the Bank Stock Office and the Rotunda, encountered persistent problems with weatherproofing.

Alterations, in Soane's hand, to drawing 75 show a widening of the central projection to two bays rather than one. This modification suggests a design similar to the executed version, featuring plenty of space for windows.

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).