[3] Record copy of a survey drawing

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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 volume 64/225

Purpose

[3] Record copy of a survey drawing

Aspect

General plan as in drawing SM volume 67/51

Scale

to a scale

Inscribed

(pencil, attibuted to A. Bolton (1864-1945, curator 1917-45)) Castle Hill / Lord Fortescue / See also p.123

Signed and dated

datable to May 1786

Medium and dimensions

Pen, light and dark grey wash, pencil on laid paper (451 x 289)

Hand

John McDonnell (1770-?, pupil 1796-1791), John Sanders (1758-?1826, pupil 1784-90) and Soane

Watermark

J Whatman

Notes

SM volume 67/51 and SM volume 64/225 are designs for altering the office wings, with the central range of the house left without much detail. The drawings correspond to the elevation in SM 5/3/7, showing Soane's preliminary designs for alterations.

SM volume 67/51 is a measured drawing for making alterations to the west wing and the terminal pavilions. The wood house and malt house occupying the west wing were refitted to contain a kitchen, laundry, housekeeper's room and other servants' rooms. Preliminary designs for these alterations are shown on SM volume 67/51, with windows and a door added to the drawing in pen. A 'Road to Offices' and 'Drying Ground' have been added by Soane in pencil on the left-hand side of the sheet, suggesting a road approaching the house on the west side and entering the 'gothic gateway' to the rear of the house, with a drying ground behind the hedges so as not to be visible from the front entrance. The brew house and washhouse to the north of the central section were demolished.

In comparing drawings SM volume 67/51 and SM volume 64/225 with later plans (SM volume 67/52 and SM volume 64/123), it is apparent that the layout of Lord Fortescue’s rooms was greatly altered, suggesting that another set of building works occurred after the offices were refitted, between 1788 and 1791.

Literature

P. Dean, Sir John Soane and the country estate, 1999, pp. 175

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).