[48-49] Alternative designs by Soane for the ground floor plan related to positioning the Pitt Cenotaph, 23-25 January 1818 (3)

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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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  - 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 (48) 48/1/34 (49) 48/1/32 (50) 48/1/31

Purpose

[48-49] Alternative designs by Soane for the ground floor plan related to positioning the Pitt Cenotaph, 23-25 January 1818 (3)

Aspect

48 Rough ground floor plan 49-50 Rough ground floor plans with a diagonal axis

Scale

(48-50) bar scales of 2¼ inches to 10 feet

Inscribed

48 M^rHigham and a few dimensions given 49 Strong Room, M^rH Rm, Strong C[loset], Closet, Public Hall, Counter, Lobby / or / Por[ch] 50 M^rHigham, Strong Closet, Closet, Public Hall, Counter (twice), 6 Clerks and a few dimensions given

Signed and dated

(48) 23 Jan 1818 and (pencil, Bailey) Jan^y23^d1818 (49) Sunday 25 Jan 1818 and (Bailey) January 23^d1818 (50) Sunday 25 Jan^ry 1818 and (pencil, Bailey) Jan^y23 1818

Medium and dimensions

(48) Brown pen and pencil on wove paper (708 x 512) (49) brown pen, sepia wash, pencil on wove paper (704 x 535) (50) brown pen, pencil on wove paper (689 x 490)

Hand

(48-50) outline plans by George Bailey (1792-1860, pupil then assistant, 1806-37, curator 1837-60) with rough designs for new layouts by Soane

Notes

The outline site plans now includes Mello & Pead's premises (left-hand side) which enlarges the site available to Soane by about one third. Encouraged by this and fired by his idea of a Cenotaph memorialising William Pitt the Younger, Soane re-cast the layout. Drawing 48 enlarges the banking hall and places the Cenotaph and Mr Higham's room at the back. Drawings 49 and 50 show a bolder design with the Cenotaph on a clear and more focused diagonal axis to the entrance now positioned on the corner of Old Jewry and Meeting House Court.

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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