Explore Collections Explore The Collections
You are here: CollectionsOnline  /  [15-17] Variant designs (B1-B4) for the front elevation with a three or four-bay attic storey, 23-25 October 1817 (3)
  • image Image 1 for SM (15) 48/2/8 (16) 48/2/12 (17) 48/2/9
  • image Image 2 for SM (15) 48/2/8 (16) 48/2/12 (17) 48/2/9
  • image Image 3 for SM (15) 48/2/8 (16) 48/2/12 (17) 48/2/9
  • image Image 1 for SM (15) 48/2/8 (16) 48/2/12 (17) 48/2/9
  • image Image 2 for SM (15) 48/2/8 (16) 48/2/12 (17) 48/2/9
  • image Image 3 for SM (15) 48/2/8 (16) 48/2/12 (17) 48/2/9

Reference number

SM (15) 48/2/8 (16) 48/2/12 (17) 48/2/9

Purpose

[15-17] Variant designs (B1-B4) for the front elevation with a three or four-bay attic storey, 23-25 October 1817 (3)

Aspect

15 Front elevation, wall plan and section of wall 16 Front elevation, wall plan and section of wall 17 Front elevation, wall plan and section of wall with flier showing alternative details

Scale

(15-17) bar scales of 3 inches to 10 feet

Inscribed

(17) National Debt Red (flier, on facade)

Signed and dated

  • (17) (Soane) 23d Oct: 1817

Medium and dimensions

(15) Pen, sepia and pale raw umber washes, shaded, pricked for transfer on thin wove paper (574 x 700) (16) pen, sepia, warm sepia and raw umber washes, shaded, pricked for transfer on thin wove paper (572 x 709) (17) pen, brown pen and sepia washes, shaded on thin wove paper recently backed (572 x 709, flier 188 x 422)

Hand

(15-17) Edward Foxhall (1793-1862, pupil 1812-1821) and Henry Parke (1790-1835, pupil 1814-1820) from Day Book (17) some additions and erasures by Soane

Watermark

(15-17) 1816

Notes

These designs are variants of design A (drawings 4 and 9) and keep the same overall form.
Drawing 15 (design B1) has the same six-bay front with a four-bay attic but with the addition of a basement with round-arched windows; evidently more utilitarian space was required for cellars, kitchen and servants (cf. drawing 10). The ground floor is close to the original though the door openings vary slightly, the first floor has all round-arched windows without the 'spinning top' motif, the second floor has square-headed windows and is without panel pilasters to its ends.
What changes with drawing 16 (design B2) is that the rhythm of the round-arched windows differs because the facade is now composed of five bays instead of six while the attic has three bays instead of four and the rustication has changed to banded on three floors to the height of the springing line. The narrow bay to the left (a few inches more than the three-feet width of the door) now has windows to the first and second floor with the circular window above the door of earlier designs.
Drawing 17, drawn by Soane, has a flier so that it offers variant designs for the upper part of the building. Overall, the design is close to drawing 16, that is of five and three bays with a basement, similar windows and rustication; the unsuccessful extrados to each round-arched window has gone. With the flier up (design B3) the right-hand second floor bay has the panel pilasters erased and the end bays of the second floor have each a shallow pediment. With the flier down (design B4) the pediments have been removed and the left-hand second floor window has a cornice roughed-in.

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).