Designs for altering the Front Court, Threadneedle Street façade, south-east transfer halls and Rotunda, 10 December 1805 (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)
    - 1799-1810 Expansions north-west and rebuilding of existing offices (487)
      - Front Court and Pay Hall, 1799-1801 and 1806-1810 (24)

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Reference number

SM (6) 9/4/32 (7) 10/7/14 (8) 10/1/9 (9) 10/1/10

Purpose

Designs for altering the Front Court, Threadneedle Street façade, south-east transfer halls and Rotunda, 10 December 1805 (2)

Aspect

6 Ground floor plan (with fliers) 7 Ground floor plan 8 Elevation of the Entrance Building 9 Elevaiton of the Entrance Building

Scale

(6, 8) bar scale (7, 9) to a scale

Inscribed

6 (Soane) Design No 1, Pay Office, Lodge, Principal Ent[ran]^cecont[inue]^d, Paved Court, Pay Hall, Lobby / to / Court room, Court room, Bullion Court, Vestibule, Coffee room, Discount office, Court, Inspectors Office, (cancelled) Drawing / office / in / the / Acc^ts Dep^t replaced with (pencil) G Cash book / Investigator, Chancery, (cancelled) G Cash book replaced with (pencil) Exchequer, Door, Secretary, Cashiers Office, Antiroom / to / Mr Newland's / room, Mr Newland's / room, Arched Entrance with Lothbury Court, addition to the Bullion / office, Bullion Office, (pencil) E / E, Treasury / enlarged EE, Income / Office, For / the / Public, 3 pr Cent / Consols (twice), The Bank Stock Office, (pencil) Strong Room, Vestibule, 4 per Cent Office / &c, Mr Walton, Registry / of / Wills &c, unclaimed / Dividends, Urinal Court and on flier (Soane, pencil): Mr Walton's, this room is pay office / then A should be the / strong room / Pay Office, and flier over the front entrance building (partly not photographed) (Soane): Design / No. 2, Principal Ent[rance], Ent[rance] to Bank Plan & Elevation as it now is 7 The Bank of England, plan labelled (Soane): Plan of a design to improve the Entrances into / the Bank from Threadneedle Street, Principal Entrance, This may be continued as a Central Entrance if thought needful, Paved Court, Entrance, Lodge, Paved Court, Pay Hall, Court Room, Lobby to the / Court Room, Staircase / to / the Bank / note office / &c, A.B & D / If these parts are / covered it would / add perhaps to / the accommodation / of the public 8 The Bank of England, Elevation of the Centre of the South Front

Signed and dated

(6) Bank. Dec^r10^th1805 (7) Lin[colns] Inn Fields Dec^r 10: 1805

Hand

(6-7) Soane office and Soane (8-9) Soane office

Watermark

(6) (trimmed on both ends) -W Kingsfor[d]- / 1803 (8) Ruse & Turners 1805 (9) crowned fleur-de-lis above R&T

Notes

The fliers on drawing 6 show alternative designs for the front entrance building and the south-east transfer office. Drawing 7 shows one of these alternatives, for a corridor on the west side of the Front Court. The Long Passage is shown in drawing 6 as it was built in 1806, and the addition to the Bullion Office is also shown as it was built by 1808 (q.v. see separate schemes). Drawing 6 shows various alterations to the offices. A strong room is in the centre of the Rotunda and the south transfer office, built by Taylor, is replaced with offices, a urinal court, and a corridor connecting the south-east transfer office (right-hand side of drawing) to the Front Court. Soane's Front Court has a wide corridor passing on its west side. Soane's attempt to build an entrance vestibule in the Front Court was denied in 1801, five years earlier. The Rotunda vestibule has been altered to serve as an Income Office: after 1799 the Bank of England was responsible for collecting Income Tax.

Drawings 8 and 9 show the alternative designs in elevation. Drawing 8 has doors on either side of the central arch; drawing 9 has the doors moved away from the centre so that they are in the end bays. Drawing 8, therefore, corresponds with the design as it now is on the flier of drawing 6. Drawing 9 corresponds with the design in drawing 7 and beneath the flier on drawing 6.

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).