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  • image Image 1 for SM (1) 2/4/6 (2) 2/4/5
  • image Image 2 for SM (1) 2/4/6 (2) 2/4/5
  • image Image 1 for SM (1) 2/4/6 (2) 2/4/5
  • image Image 2 for SM (1) 2/4/6 (2) 2/4/5

Reference number

SM (1) 2/4/6 (2) 2/4/5

Purpose

Designs, c. June 1816 (2)

Aspect

1 Plan of the Reduced Annuities Office 2 Plan of the 3½ Dividend Office (then an Armory)

Scale

(1-2) bar scale

Inscribed

1 The Bank of England and (feint pencil) some dimensions given

Signed and dated

  • (1-2) datable to c. June 1816

Hand

Soane office

Notes

Drawings 1 and 2 show plans for the alterations propsed for the south-west office (the Reduced Annuities office and Armory respectively). Originally (see overall plan, q.v.) the two rooms (which can be seen together in drawing 3) had been divided by a wall running from the south-west corner of the Garden Court to the west wall opposite, on the northern side of the doorway onto that court. Soane's designs show his intention to demolish that wall and reduce the size of what was then called the Armory, adding another wall further to the north. Instead of a wall, Soane added paired columns with segmental arches above, to support the domed lantern.

Drawing 1 also shows the counters and desks in place and two circular objects in the centre of the counters - the stoves. The corner pillars on the southern side (left) were original to Taylor's design.

Drawing 2 similarly indicates the desk position (presumably the previous function of the room as an armory was to be abandoned in favour of a ?cheque? office). There is a central stove again and the east wall (bottom) shows the piers, engaged columns and window jambs of the segmental-arched windows that faced onto the Garden Court. The Barrack Court is labelled to the north (right) and a fireplace is shown in the north wall.

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).