Site record drawings of the old house, 25 April 1815 (3)

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The drawings from the office of Sir John Soane
- Public buildings
  - London: Royal Hospital, Chelsea for the Board of Commissioners, 1807-1835 (226)
    - Clerk of Works' House, 1807-1833 (35)

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Reference number

SM (146) volume 76/54 (147) volume 76/55 (148) volume 76/58

Purpose

Site record drawings of the old house, 25 April 1815 (3)

Aspect

146 View of the Back part of the Clerk of the Works' house, / as it stood previously to the alterations, Chelsea Hospital (south front) 147 View of the West End of the Clerk of the Works' house, / as it stood previously to the alterations, Chelsea Hospital 148 View of the Front of the Clerk of the Works' house, and / part of the Old Stables, as they stood previously to the alterations., Chelsea Hospital (north front)

Inscribed

146-148 as above

Signed and dated

(146-148) April 25^th. 1815

Hand

Soane office

Notes

This group of drawings (as well as drawings 125 and 126) show the house, visually divided into two parts. That to the east has a pitched roof with dormer windows above four tall windows while the west part of the house is made up of a number of additions.

Drawing 146 was drawn from a south-east viewpoint. It has the L-shaped layout shown on drawings 144 and 145. As indicated by the outline of a gabled extension, a building has clearly been removed from the internal right-angle of this layout. This may have been the 'Office' drawn in red ink on drawing 145. To the east (the right hand side), the Clerk of Works' House extends as far as the ground floor window furthest to the right - this room is the one labelled 'Library' on drawing 144. Beyond this, the old stables run directly on from the Clerk of Works' House (as indicated by the double wooden doors within a large arch).

Drawing 147 shows the west side of the house and in front, the buildings labelled on drawing 145 as the 'Coachouse', 'Harness room' and 'Stable'. There is a horse trough outside the stable. Soane's new Infirmary can be seen to the south, demonstrating its proximity to surrounding buildings which so affected the quality of its air circulation.

Drawing 148 was drawn from the view-point of Paradise Row, showing the north front of the house that adjoins the stables on the left hand (eastern) side . Here the Clerk of Works' House extends as far as the window nearest the left hand side (on the east) (which can again be seen on drawings 144 and 145), beyond which are the stables.

Literature

C.G.T. Dean, The Royal Hospital, Chelsea, 1950, p.115

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).