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Notes
The preliminary drawings for Pitzhanger first expand on the surveys of the earlier sub-section. Soane consulted John Haverfield of Kew (with whom he had worked on earlier projects) very early on the designs and layout of the Pitzhanger grounds (11 July 1800). The first drawings experiment with the position of the house (looking very similar in plan to the final designs for a villa at Acton) and show Soane contemplating the complete demolition of the old house in order to have a free rein over the position, size and form of the new house. The following five designs (drawings 68 to 72) are also very similar to the last designs for Acton. The first seven designs (drawings 66 to 72) then, show a separate and symmetrical villa with no attached Dance wing to hinder construction. Drawing 71 is the first to show an elevation of Soane’s proposed new house with the old Dance wing attached. Although it may not have been an ideal solution to retain the Dance wing in Soane’s eyes, he himself declared in his Plans, Elevations and Perspective Views that ‘I was naturally attached to this part of the building, it being the first whose progress and construction I had attended at the commencement of my architectural studies in Mr. Dance’s office.’
The designs follow through a number of stages, most interestingly two designs for a villa attached to the old Dance wing, with turrets and two designs for a brick house with flint piers, similar to the gated entrance and also to Soane’s work at Betchworth Castle. The lawn front is shown in drawings 84 and 85 with four columns surmounted by figurative statues. However, Soane seems to have changed his mind and decided that this columned facade was more appropriate for the entrance front, shown in drawing 89. From drawing 94 onwards the designs begin to bear a much closer resemblance to Pitzhanger as it was built.
Virginia Brilliant's TS Pitzhanger catalogue has been instumental to the creation of this catalogue.
Matilda Burn 2010
Level
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).
Contents of Preliminary designs for Pitzhanger Manor, villas A to G, c. August - c. November 1800 (31)
- Survey drawings with rough design for a new house added, c. August 1800 (2)
- Preliminary designs and preliminary working drawings for a villa on the site of the old Pitzhanger Manor, August - October 1800 (6)
- Variant preliminary designs: B, 2 July - 10 October 1800 (3)
- Preliminary design with turrets: C, 21-23 August 1800 (2)
- Preliminary designs for the entrance front: D, 30 August - 4 September 1800 (3)
- Designs for entrance and garden fronts: E, 10-20 September 1800 (5)
- Preliminary working drawings: E, 9-28 October 1800 (3)
- Preliminary variant designs for the exterior : F, October 1800 (3)
- Two sketches made on the same day showing the extant and the proposed Pitzhanger, 25 October 1800 (2)
- Presentation drawings for the exterior: G, c. November 1800 (2)