[1] Presentation drawing of the existing house, 1786

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Country houses, etc.
  - Castle Hill, Devon: (executed) alterations to house and offices, 1786- c.1788, and record drawing, 1807, for 1st Earl Fortescue (5)

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Reference number

SM 5/3/7

Purpose

[1] Presentation drawing of the existing house, 1786

Aspect

Elevation of Principal Front of House and Offices

Scale

bar scale of 1/16 inch to 1 foot, approximately

Inscribed

as above, Castle Hill, The Right Hon^bleLord Fortescue

Signed and dated

datable to 1786-91 (see Notes)

Medium and dimensions

Pen, grey and sepia washes, pencil within double ruled and wash border on laid paper (470 x 560)

Hand

John McDonnell (1770-?, pupil 1786-91) and John Sanders (1758-?1826, pupil 1784-90)

Watermark

J Whatman and fleur-de-lis within crowned cartouche with W below

Notes

Built on a shallow H-shaped plan, the nine-bay front has slightly projecting end-bays. A bracketed entablature and balustraded parapet continue across the front and a cupola faced with a Diocletian window crowns the roof. Single-storey office wings extend at both ends, each wing faced with a round-headed niche and terminating in a domed pavilion.

The elevation shows the house before Soane's alterations and, as in drawings SM volume 67/51 and SM volume 64/225, it was probably made in April or May 1786 when Soane sent Lord Fortescue an 'elevation of the house as it now is' (Journal N^o 1, p.81).

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).