[89-91] Presentation drawings of the near-final design for the front elevation (N1, N2), 26 September 1818 (3)

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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 (89) 48/2/25 (90) 48/2/27 (91) 48/2/7

Purpose

[89-91] Presentation drawings of the near-final design for the front elevation (N1, N2), 26 September 1818 (3)

Aspect

89 Front elevation and wall section 90 Side elevation and wall section 91 Perspective

Scale

(89-90) bar scales of 3½ inches to 10 feet

Inscribed

(89) some dimensions given (90) dimensions given

Signed and dated

(90) 26^thSept^r1818

Medium and dimensions

(89) Pen, raw umber, blue-grey, sepia, raw Sienna and pink washes, shaded with double-ruled and sepia wash border on wove paper (604 x 809) (90) pen, raw Sienna, blue-grey, sepia washes with double-ruled sepia wash border on wove paper (604 x 803) (91) pen, raw umber, sepia, blue, Indian red and green washes, shaded with single-ruled and sepia wash border on wove paper (495 x 684)

Hand

(89-91) ? Henry Parke (1790-1835, pupil 1814-1820)

Watermark

(89-90) J Whatman 1816 (1891) Smith & Allnutt

Notes

It is probable that the drawings were made for final approval by the Bank of England's building committee.
A comparison with the very small front elevation reproduced in Soane's Designs for public and private buildings, 1833, plate XLVIII**** shows that it corresponds with drawing 89 (variant design N1) except that the published design has pediments over the projecting end bays (as with variant design K) and not a single one that spans three bays in the centre as here. The Greek key ornament and antefixes are not shown in the published design. Other designs (variant designs C1, C2 and E) have a central pediment spanning a single bay.
Drawing 90 is of five bays with round-headed windows save for those in the basement, plain pilasters link the end bays and a Greek key frieze runs below the cornice. Of the other side elevations (35, 36, 39, 72) drawing 91 is closest to drawing 72 though without pediments over the end bays.
The perspective (drawing 91, N2) is without the pediment and antefixes shown on drawing 89.
This final or near-final design is more reticent than some of the earlier ones. It keeps the projecting bays 1 and 5 of the first and second storeys that appear on several previous designs as well as the 'loggia' form of the ground floor that occurs early on and the string course design has been used before. The decision about entrances and the treatment of the marginal elements at each end and in particular, the left-hand side (now almost invisible) has been decided.

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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