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Signed and dated
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Notes
What remains unclear is whether or not the full hypocaust system show in drawing 45 was realised. Todd Willmert's in-depth study of Soane's heating systems presumes not, for unexplained reasons. But the appearance of ductwork in drawings 17 and 22 suggests otherwise. Also unknown is what elements of the system would have been designed by Soane and what by expert craftsmen like Ramellie.
In any event, drawings 44-48 illustrate the importance Soane placed on the hall's heating and his willingness to utilise fairly advanced systems, as Willmert has shown. The Bank Stock Office probably remained quite chilly, especially for the clerks and tellers working in winter well away from the central stove. Arthur T. Bolton (The Works of Sir John Soane, 1924, p. 64) reported that eventually independent stoves were placed against the hall's piers.
Literature. T. Willmert. 'Heating methods and their impact on Soane's work: Lincoln's Inn Fields and Dulwich Picture Gallery', Journal of Society of Architectural Historians, 52/1, March 1993, pp. 26-58
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 Designs for the heating system, c 1792-93 (5)
- Design for stove, close to executed design
- Design for hypocaust heating system
- Designs for firebox, stove, chimney piece and flues (2)
- Design for stove, as executed, dated 23 February 1793