[14] Working drawing for the clerk of works, 7 October 1790

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
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  - Norwich, Norfolk: Norwich Castle Gaol: survey, design, working and record drawings for Norwich City Corporation, 1788-1792 (57)

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Reference number

SM 73/3/21

Purpose

[14] Working drawing for the clerk of works, 7 October 1790

Aspect

Plan of court at window sill level and laid-out elevations of walls facing the court

Scale

bar scale of 1/8 inch to one foot

Inscribed

(Soane) A B C, The Windows on the two pair / floor & Attics are to have / only three Stones as per Sketch / rebated to receive the frames & to / go through the whole thickness of Walls as in the other // A. The inside Recess of these / Windows all round the Quadrangle / to range with the Soffites of / the Cells // B. This fascia / is to range / with the window / Cills of the Aeries (*) in the same manner /as at C. (verso) M^rCooper (Clerk of Works at Norwich Castle). * 'Aerie ... used fig[uratively] of a high-perched human dwelling or retreat' (OED) and refers here to the windows of the topmost storey.

Signed and dated

Oct^r7 1790

Medium and dimensions

Pen and sepia washes, shaded on stout cartridge paper with three fold marks (490 x 600)

Hand

Soane office and Soane

Notes

Soane's office 'Journal N^o1' has an entry for 5 October 1790 - 'to Norwich Castle' and on 7 October - 'Cooper 10.0.0'. Robert Cooper was Soane's clerk of the works for Norwich Castle from 25 March 1790 to 23 February 1793 ('Ledger B', p.10) and the drawing is directed to him. It was made by an office hand shortly before 5 November and taken by Soane to Norwich. Soane amended it with a writing (quill) pen: the windows were to be modestly rusticated with 'three stones' (one keystone and two voussoirs), and the 'fascia' (string course or plat) at B was to be raised and run as that at C on the first floor level. Soane also made the battlements taller (top elevation), and changed the height of an arch (top elevation) but then had second thoughts and cancelled that amendment.

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).