Design for the vestibule, showing an open oculus at the top of the dome

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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)
      - Doric Vestibule, 1803-1805 (70)

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Reference number

(49) volume 72/49

Purpose

Design for the vestibule, showing an open oculus at the top of the dome

Aspect

49 Section looking east; and rough details of ornamentation for the dome and mouldings; (verso) rough details of a spandrel and a ball moulding

Scale

bar scale

Inscribed

Acc[ountan]t^s floor, fillet, and dimensions, (verso) Rail fillet

Signed and dated

between September 1803 and February 1804 (see Notes); (verso) Feb. 9 1804

Hand

Soane office and Soane

Watermark

J Whatman 1801

Notes

Drawing 49 is not dated but it falls after September 1803 due to its content and before February 1804 according to its verso. The exteriors shown correspond with drawings dated September 1803 and after (the shapes of the windows, for example in scheme 3:7). A rough drawing for ornament on the verso was undoubtedly executed later than the recto and is dated 9 February 1804.

An oculs is at the top of the domed hall and indirectly lit by windows in the attic. The window is therefore not open to the exterior but made to appear as such, resembling a Roman villa. The dome's hollow cone construction is shown here in section.

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).