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You are here: CollectionsOnline  /  [41-42] Designs for the ground floor, 15-16 December 1817 (2)
  • image Image 1 for SM (41) 48/1/41 (42) 48/1/40
  • image Image 2 for SM (41) 48/1/41 (42) 48/1/40
  • image Image 1 for SM (41) 48/1/41 (42) 48/1/40
  • image Image 2 for SM (41) 48/1/41 (42) 48/1/40

Reference number

SM (41) 48/1/41 (42) 48/1/40

Purpose

[41-42] Designs for the ground floor, 15-16 December 1817 (2)

Aspect

41 Plan of the ground floor excluding the Mello, Pead and Co. premises 42 Plan of the Ground or Office Floor with pencil additions

Scale

41-42 bar scales of 3½ inches to 10 feet

Inscribed

41 some dimensions give including (pencil) 60:7½ (width of frontage) and some calculations 42 as above, The Old Jewry, Warehouse in the occupation of Messrs Mello Pead & Co, labelled: Messrs Mello Pead & Co , Public Hall, Messenger, Water / Closet, Lobby (twice), Statue, Court, 2nd Office, Strong / Closet, Staircase, Mr Higham's Room, 13 feet square, Office, 25 feet

Signed and dated

  • (41) Lincolns Inn Fields / 15th December 1817 (42) Lincolns Inn Fields / December 16 1817

Medium and dimensions

(41) Pen, sepia, light blue and light pink washes, pencil, pricked for transfer on wove paper (535 x 750) (42) pen, light red and blue washes, pencil with double ruled and sepia wash border on wove paper (607 x 811)

Hand

(41-42) Edward Foxhall (1793-1862, pupil 1812-1821) and Henry Parke (1790-1835, pupil 1814-1820) from Day Book

Watermark

(42) J Whatman 1816

Notes

Drawing 41 shows Mr Higham's office (labelled thus on drawing 42) with two of its corners made into rectangular niches. More interesting are the two ceiling plans, each composed of a large circle contained in a square, for the banking hall and for the room behind it.
On drawing 42, 'Mr Higham's Room' appears to have the only window blocked up. The large room behind the banking hall contains a dais for a 'Statue'. The first indication of Soane's scheme for a memorial to William Pitt the Younger (1759-1816) for which see the following drawings.
The premises of Messrs Mello, Pead & Co. are shown on this plan and a large circle has been pencilled-in (presumably by Soane) and may indicate another possible location for the 'statue'.

Level

Drawing

Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation

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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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