Surveys, alterations and repairs to Wren's Chapel, the north wing of the Light Horse Court and the Octagon porch portico, December 1817

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
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  - London: Royal Hospital, Chelsea for the Board of Commissioners, 1807-1835 (226)

Purpose

Surveys, alterations and repairs to Wren's Chapel, the north wing of the Light Horse Court and the Octagon porch portico, December 1817 - April 1835 (12)

Notes

Since his 1807 appointment, Soane consistently made a variety of repairs, alterations and additions to the existing buildings. Indeed, from 1807 to 1809 when the Infirmary was commissioned, Soane had little to do besides repairs and alterations. Between the years 1807 and 1821 a total of £18,371.3.6 was spent on such repairs. There are, however, only ten drawings in the SM collection that record the repairs and alterations: three for alterations made within the chapel to its furniture, six for internal alterations to the north-east wing of the Light Horse Court and one for repairs made to the main hospital portico. These repairs and alterations are recorded in the Board of Commissioners minutes as well.

Th SM Archive holds one plan of the timbers over the portico (Priv.Corr.IX.J.46).

The Chapel survives intact today - even the pulpit (as divided by Soane) is still in situ. The north-east Light Horse Court wing, however, was partially destroyed in 1918 (by a Zeppelin) and completely destroyed in 1945 by a bomb. It was subsequently rebuilt, in the style of Wren. None of the Soane interiors survive.

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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).

Contents of Surveys, alterations and repairs to Wren's Chapel, the north wing of the Light Horse Court and the Octagon porch portico, December 1817 - April 1835 (12)