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You are here: CollectionsOnline  /  Working drawings for the interior of a four-columned portico, showing only two floors, 25 September 1804 (3)
  • image Image 1 for SM (24) 1/6/17 (25) 1/3/15 (26) 1/3/16
  • image Image 2 for SM (24) 1/6/17 (25) 1/3/15 (26) 1/3/16
  • image Image 3 for SM (24) 1/6/17 (25) 1/3/15 (26) 1/3/16
  • image Image 1 for SM (24) 1/6/17 (25) 1/3/15 (26) 1/3/16
  • image Image 2 for SM (24) 1/6/17 (25) 1/3/15 (26) 1/3/16
  • image Image 3 for SM (24) 1/6/17 (25) 1/3/15 (26) 1/3/16

Reference number

SM (24) 1/6/17 (25) 1/3/15 (26) 1/3/16

Purpose

Working drawings for the interior of a four-columned portico, showing only two floors, 25 September 1804 (3)

Aspect

24 Cross section 25 Longitudinal section 26 Cross section; three rough cross-sections of the recess

Scale

(24-26) to a scale

Inscribed

24 The Bank of England, Design for the North west End, (Soane, feint red pen) Section on the line A.B. See plan and dimensions and calculations 26 The Bank of England, Sketch of a Design for the North West Corner and dimensions given; (verso) Bank Plans &c / April 19 1808

Signed and dated

  • (24) Sepr 25: 1804 (25) L.I.F. / Sepr 25: 1804 (26) L.I.F. / Sepr 25: 1804

Hand

Soane office and Soane

Notes

Unlike Soane's previous designs (drawings 6 to 17) the interior is not divided into apsidal chambers flanking a central recess, and there is no intermediate storey (as shown in section on drawings 13 and 17), resulting in a design having a single ground floor chamber surmounted by a three-stage attic. The attic includes a passage for the rampart walk over the screen wall. Drawing 26 shows three alternative interiors cancelled in pencil.

The attic in drawing 26 has an opening on the front that allowed light to enter the room, similar to the designs for the triumphal theme (see drawing 15, for example). The large openings on the side of the attic indicate that the attic was probably used as a passage for the rampart walk over the screen wall. Alternatively, the openings could have been a way to shed light inside the attic, thereby illuminating the front-facing window from within.

The distance between the antae is twice the intercolumniation of the portico (see drawings 22 and 23) at approximately 15'9". The architrave measures approximately 30 feet high, slightly taller than the designs in drawings 22 and 23.

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).