[55-57] Presentation design No. 3 including variant designs (I and J) for the front elevation, for laying before the Committee for Building, January 1818 (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 (55) 48/1/33 (56) 48/1/35 (57) 48/2/13 (58) 48/2/3

Purpose

[55-57] Presentation design No. 3 including variant designs (I and J) for the front elevation, for laying before the Committee for Building, January 1818 (4)

Aspect

55 Plan of the whole of the ground floor with alternative wall plans and with amendments added by Soane 56 Plan of the entire Hall, or Ground Floor
57 Front elevation 58 Perspective

Scale

(55-57) bar scales of 2¼ inches to 10 feet

Inscribed

55 N^o3, rooms labelled: Public Hall, Office, Mr Highams / Room, 2^nd Office, Strong Room, Statue, Public Hall, Counter (twice), and added by Soane: Hall / or / Entrance, Private office / for examination / of acc^ts&c, Messenger, The [office] for Saving Bank / Debentures, [Office] for granting / Annuities and some dimensions given 56 N^o3, Lobby, Staircase, Private Office / for the Examination / of Accounts &c, Court, Strong Room, Messenger, Public Hall, Q^y(query) Front of Counter, Office for granting / Life Annuities, M^rHigham's Room, For the Public, Counter, 2^ndOffice for / Saving Bank Debentures and some dimensions given 57 N^o3 58 Design N^o 3

Signed and dated

(55) Jan^y26 1818 (56) Lincolns Inn Fields / January 27^th1818 (57) Lincolns Inn Fields / January 27 1818 (58) Lincolns Inn Fields / Jan^y1818

Medium and dimensions

(55) Pen, brown pen, sepia and light blue washes on wove paper (735 x 519) (56) pen, sepia, light raw umber and light blue washes with double ruled and black wash border on wove paper (820 x 621) (57) pen, light umber, sepia and green washes, shaded with double ruled and black wash border on wove paper (441 x 572) (58) pen, raw umber, sepia, blue, grey and green washes, shaded with single ruled and black wash border on wove paper (452 x 640)

Hand

(55-58) George Bailey (1792-1860, pupil then assistant, 1806-37, curator 1837-60)

Watermark

(56) J Whatman 1816

Notes

For the first time the plans include the premises belonging to Messrs Mello, Pead and Company. This makes the site almost a square with only the left-hand boundary wall at a skew. More offices have been provided for the different functions of the National Debt Redemption Office and the Cenotaph has been located not in the centre as before but left of centre though still on an axis with the entrance. Soane's amendments to the plan include bringing the building forward by 3 feet 4½ inches which is exactly what was gained when the back boundary wall (see drawing 51 and all earlier plans) was regularized. An alternative plan for the front wall is roughed in by Soane and an office hand has drawn out three further varying designs, one for the elevation to Old Jewry and two for elevations next to Meeting House Court.
The elevation (drawing 57, design I) is simpler than in previous designs. It reads as five bays wide and four storeys high over a semi-basement. The entrance is off-centre, the end bays marked by thin, plain pilasters. The perspective (58, design J) offers an alternative design in which there are three storeys rather than four and the ground floor has recessed openings in loggia-like manner. Compared with the elevation (57) the perspective design is more imposing with fewer but larger windows and an assertive ground floor though the entrances are rather weak. The contrast between the comparitivel starved design of drawing 57 and the more robust design of drawing 58 was presumably deliberate. The Committee for Building must have been persuaded by the second of the two designs since further drawings (62, 63, 71, 72, 89, 91) follow the three-storeyed, round arched windows and loggia approach.

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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