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Reference number

SM, volume 110/15

Purpose

[2] Study design for the central pavilion of the south (Privy Garden) range, for the king's apartments, nearly as executed

Aspect

Half-elevation, with part-plan of the facade and sections of the floor structure

Scale

5 feet to 1 inch

Inscribed

In ink by Hawksmoor at top left, Scale 5ft in 1 inch -- ; and above in ink by Dance, Gd; and to right in C19 hand, (15)

Signed and dated

  • Undated, but datable mid-1689

Medium and dimensions

Pen and brown ink over graphite and incised lines Laid paper, laid down, with staining over bottom left-hand corner 359 x 200

Hand

Hawksmoor

Watermark

Strasbourg Lily / 4WR

Notes

Several details of this study design for the central pavilion of the Privy Garden front were modified in execution. Pediments were added to the flanking windows, the main cornice was given modillions and the oval windows were set slightly lower. Some of these revisions appear on the presentation drawing of the complete elevation (5, below; 110/10).

In the fabric, the columns of the main order were increased in height from 22 feet to about 23 feet 2 inches, mainly by enlarging the height of the plinths of the bases. The entablature remained at 5 feet, giving an overall height for the order of 28 feet 2 inches, compared with 27 feet here. The corresponding dimension on the equivalent detailed design for the centre of the east front is 28 feet 1 inch (4, below; 110/12). The attic was increased in the fabric by a few inches – presumably to remain consistent with the order below. Thus the elevation as a whole, from the ground to the top of the cornice below the balustrade, grew by nearly 1½ feet, from 54 feet 1 inch on this drawing to 56 feet 6 inches in the fabric. The latter dimension is the height of the park front on Hawksmoor’s detailed part-elevation, 110/12.

The drawing reveals the relationship between the floor structure and the elevation. The lower face of the floor structure is 6 inches above the tops of the ground floor openings, or 11 feet 10 inches above the ground. This compares with 11 feet 4 inches on 110/8 (section 4, 1). Allowing 1 foot for the depth of the floor, the overall height of the ground floor is now 12 feet 10 inches. This is 8 inches less than the executed height of 13 feet 6 inches (see Thurley, 2003, pl. 148).

Literature

Wren Society, IV, pl. 19, bottom

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).