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Purpose

Designs for alterations to the Bank of England branch, Bridge Street, as executed, February 1827 (5)

Notes

Drawings 24-28 show that extensive alterations were made to the interior of the property on Bridge Street in order to convert it into a bank. Drawing 24 shows the conversion of the basement into storage and domestic rooms, with wine and coal cellars, a porter's room, kitchen (previously on the ground floor viz. drawing 19), scullery and strong room. A new geometrical staircase, extending from the basement to the one pair floor, was built, as well as a staircase leading from the back of the ground floor banking room to the strong room in the basement. The large open warehouse on the ground floor (drawing 25) was transformed into a waiting room and agent's room, whilst the demolition of the partition between the warehouse and counting house created a large banking hall with three counters. A conspicuous exterior addition was the columned porch to the front of the building. The upper floors were converted for domestic use (drawings 26-28).
On all five drawings, sepia wash is used for existing walls, pink wash for alterations and additions, blue wash for outside areas belonging to the premises and yellow wash for wooden fixtures (dresser and counters).

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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.

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Contents of Designs for alterations to the Bank of England branch, Bridge Street, as executed, February 1827 (5)