[18-21] Variant designs (C1-C3) for the front elevation with a five-bay attic storey, 6 November 1817 (4)

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Bank of England
  - London: National Debt Redemption Office, Old Jewry, City of London: designs, working drawings and drawings for exhibition, 1817-18, 1819, 1823 (100)

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Reference number

SM (18) 48/2/31 (19) 48/2/24 (20) 48/2/14 (21) 48/2/4

Purpose

[18-21] Variant designs (C1-C3) for the front elevation with a five-bay attic storey, 6 November 1817 (4)

Aspect

18 Front elevation, wall plan and section of wall with rough pencil part-elevation and feint pencil detail 19 Front elevation, wall plan and section of wall 20 Front elevation, wall plan and section of wall 21 Perspective with neighbouring houses and figures

Scale

(18-19) bar scales of 3½ inches to 10 feet (20) bar scale of 3 iches to 10 feet

Inscribed

18 National Debt Redemp and Annuity Office (on facade), (Soane, pencil) * leave this / window 20 Design N^o 3 (the '3' partly erased) 19-21 National Debt Redemption and Life Annuity Office (on facade)

Signed and dated

(18) October 1817 (19-20) Lincolns Inn Fields / November 6^th1817 (21) Lincolns Inn Fields Nov^r1817

Medium and dimensions

(18) Pen, sepia, warm sepia, raw umber, grey, green and pink washes, shaded, added pencil within double ruled and sepia wash border on wove paper (619 x 820) (19) pen, sepia, warm sepia, raw umber, grey, blue, green and pink washes, shaded, partly pricked for transfer within single ruled and sepia wash border on wove paper (622 x 828) (20) pen, burnt umber, sepia, blue, grey, green and pink washes on wove paper (540 x 750) (21) pen, sepia, raw umber, warm sepia, grey and green washes within single ruled and sepia wash border on wove paper (465 x 590)

Hand

George Bailey (1792-1860, pupil then assistant, 1806-37, curator 1837-60), Edward Foxhall (1793-1862, pupil 1812-1821) Henry Parke (1790-1835, pupil 1814-1820) from Day Book

Watermark

(18, 19) J Whatman 1816

Notes

These designs are for a building of four full storeys with a basement, five bays wide, with a three-bay recessed centre to the two upper storeys and with a narrow extension on the left hand side and a small, projection on the opposite side (as with earlier elevations). The four drawings share a closely related design. A comparison with the preceding drawings 15-17 (designs B1-B4) shows that, in general, the principal change is the enlargement of the attic storey from three to five bays as well as the roofline additions of balustrades over the outer (projecting) bays and a pediment over the central projection that with coupled panel pilasters gives it a temple-like appearance. The banded rustication is the same and the elegant incised semicircle with a Greek fret stop over three round-arched ground floor windows (of drawing 17) has been retained.
However, drawing 18 (design C1) has a dividing line down the centre of the drawing, on either side of which are alternative treatments for the string-courses, the addition of sunk panels above the windows of the ground and first floors (right-hand side), the position of the fascias inscribed 'National Debt Redemption and Life Annuity Office' and the arrangement of two tiers of panel pilasters on the left-hand side and three tiers on the right-hand side. Omitted are the door and circular window of the projection on the right-hand side shown on drawings 19-21. The surround to a window on the right-hand bay of the second floor has been erased and the slight pencil part-elevation to the right of this has a note 'leave this window'.
Drawings 19 and 20 (C2) share the same design. The varying treatment of the string-courses has been resolved so that the simpler design with slender, elongated tablets under each window has been chosen, there are no sunk panels and the panel pilasters are in two tiers.
The perspective drawing 21 (C3) has the panel pilasters arranged in three tiers, the outer windows of the second floor have moulded surrounds with cornices and sunk panels have been added above the heads of the outer windows of the ground and first floors. The perspective shows the front (Old Jewry) and side (Meeting House Court) of the proposed new building in a setting of brick built three- and four-storey houses with ground floor shops.

Level

Drawing

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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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