Survey drawings of William Kent's Treasury (2)

Explore Collections

You are here: CollectionsOnline / Survey drawings of William Kent's Treasury (2)

Browse

Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Office of Works
  - London: Board of Trade and Privy Council Offices, Whitehall & Downing Street: designs for new offices and scheme for the improvement of Downing Street, 1823-33 (284)
    - Survey drawings of the old Treasury Offices and first designs for new Board of Trade Offices, 1793-September 1823 (17)

Use of images and copyright
Enlarge this Image

Print this image in A4 view

Reference number

SM (1) 50/2/30 (2) 50/2/31

Purpose

Survey drawings of William Kent's Treasury (2)

Aspect

1 Plan of Part of the First Floor of the Treasury 2 Plan of Part of the Mezzanine Floor of the Treasury

Scale

(1, 2) bar scales of 1/12 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

1 as above, labelled (pencil): M^r Arbuthnot, M^r Arbuthnots / Secretary, M^r Lushington, Board Room, Library, M^r Harrison, Long Passage 2 as above, labelled (pencil): M^r W^m Cotton, Library / continued, Custom Room, Paper Room (twice), Board Room, M^r Hoblyn (twice), Bill Room, ------ (illegible) Offices

Medium and dimensions

(1, 2) Pen and grey wash, pricked for transfer with double ruled border on wove paper (357 x 495, 357 x 495)

Hand

unattributed

Watermark

(1) J Whatman 1815

Notes

The Treasury building was designed by William Kent (c.1685-1748) and built 1733-37. The north frontage which looks onto Horse Guards Parade to the left of the sheet is 88 feet wide and the building is 128 feet wide. Access is from the Treasury Passage, which is entered from Whitehall and shown at the top of drawing 1, labelled 'long passage'.
The officials named in the inscriptions are: Charles Arbuthnot (1767-1850) and Stephen Lushington (1776-1868), Joint Secretaries to the Treasury, George Harrison (1767-1841), Assistant Secretary to the Treasury, Thomas Hoblyn (1778-1860), Chief Clerk of the Treasury and William Cotton (dates unknown), Senior Clerk of the Treasury. This information and the watermark make the drawings dateable to the period 1815-23.

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).