Preliminary design showing basement level, one dated 30 April 1803 (2)

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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)
      - Accountants Office, 1803 - 1804 (53)

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Reference number

SM (7) volume 73/43 (8) volume 73/44

Purpose

Preliminary design showing basement level, one dated 30 April 1803 (2)

Aspect

7 Transverse section looking west 8 Longitudinal section looking north with segmental clerestory window added

Scale

(7-8) bar scale

Inscribed

7 The Bank, (pencil) Entablat[ure] / Plan of End / Section, H of Col. 11:6 diam 1:4, Floor 9 / Cornice 9 / 1:6 and (pen) dimensions given 8 The Bank of England, Section of the Accts Off and dimensions given

Signed and dated

(7) April 30 1803 (8) (Copy) / May 6 1803

Hand

(7) Soane office (8) Soane office and Soane

Notes

Drawing 7 has the same design as drawings 3 and 5 for the Accountants Office, but also shows the basement and the adjoining loggia. The south side of the Accountants Office has two levels of windows in drawing 7, with the upper level looking over the loggia, thereby permitting a southern light to enter the interior. The lower range of windows look onto the loggia. The executed design included tall semicircular-headed windows on both sides of the Office, with the southern side facing a double-height loggia.

A preliminary design for a lunette, in Soane's hand, is shown in drawing 8. The lunette in drawing 8 mirrors the design for the opposite wall. The executed design did not incorporate clerestory windows; achieving symmetry, as well as the clerks' requisite light source, the south elevation windows were elongated to match their counterparts on the north side of the room. Top-lighting in the transfer offices had been a source of complaint, as the high sun produced an undesirable glare on the clerks' ledgers. The windows in the Accountants Office, therefore, provided for the indirect lighting that was best for the clerks' work.

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).