Site record drawings of Taylor's south or south-east Transfer Office, one dated 24 December 1817 (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)
    - 1817-1833 Rebuilding of offices in the south-east and the façade, temporary office spaces and presentation drawings (219)
      - South and south-east Transfer Offices, 1817-23 (115)

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Reference number

SM (14) volume 71/44a (15) volume 71/35

Purpose

Site record drawings of Taylor's south or south-east Transfer Office, one dated 24 December 1817 (2)

Aspect

14-15 Perspective of the inverted arch foundations

Inscribed

14 some dimensions given 15 The Bank and View of Inverted Arches / in the £4 per Cent office

Signed and dated

(15) C.P. / 24^th Dec^r. 1817

Hand

(14) Soane office (15) see notes

Notes

Drawings 14 and 15 (though the former is undated) appear to be early, site records of Taylor's inverted arch foundations. The decaying state of these foundations was one of the reasons for Soane's rebuilding of Taylor's south and south-east Transfer Offices.

Inverted foundation arches were an inexpensive method of providing strong foundations where a great weight was to be placed above. The more expensive method involved driving piles deep into the ground and it would have been impractical for Soane to alter the method of construction. Inverted arches counteracted the forces working on them from above, carrying the strain inwards to the centre, rather than directly down through pier to base-foundation. The key stone of the inverted arch acts in the same way as a normal arch, taking the pressure. Many of Taylor's foundations, however, were redundant, given that Soane intended to use four (central) piers, rather than the 16 Taylor had required.

Drawing 15 may have been made either by Charles Edward Papendick (1801-1835, pupil 1818-1824) or by H. Parke (1790-1835, pupil 1814-1820). As mentioned in the notes to drawing 12, the initials appear to be 'CP' which would suggest Papendick, except that he did not begin as a pupil in Soane's office until 1818. The Day Book for the 24 December 1817 records that H. Parke was 'making perspective sections of a design for the new 4 per cent office' on this day. It may be that either the date or the initials were confused or badly written.

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.

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