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Hanover Square, number 18, London: designs for a library wing for the 11th Lord Le Despencer, probably executed, 1766-67 (5)

Signed and dated

  • 1766-67

Notes

18 Hanover Square was the London house of Sir Francis Dashwood, later the 11th Lord Le Despencer (see notes to West Wycombe Park). Robert Adam had made unexecuted designs for his country seat at West Wycombe in c1761-62, and later in that decade was commissioned to design a library wing for the back (north-west) side of 18 Hanover Square. This was a single-storey, 95 foot-long, narrow wing; the library itself being 60 feet long. Bolton claims that the heaviness of the ceiling and grotesque wall panels for this library are in the style of the early Adam office, offering a corrective date for these designs of 1763-65, despite the dates of 1766 and 1767 being inscribed on the drawings. Bolton's theory is eschewed by other scholars. There is no evidence that Adam's library wing was executed, but Adam's bills strongly suggest that it was. It is not possible, however, to know if this was done in accordance with the surviving drawings in the Soane Museum. The house - presumably along with Adam's library wing - was demolished in the late nineteenth century, and the site finally sold in the early 1950s.

See also: West Wycombe Park, Buckinghamshire

Literature:
A.T. Bolton, The architecture of Robert and James Adam, 1922, Volume I, p. 59, Volume II, Index p. 39; Survey of London, Volume 14, 1931, p. 131; D. King, The complete works of Robert & James Adam and unbuilt Adam, 2001, Volume I, pp. 296-97; The National Trust, West Wycombe Park: Buckinghamshire, 2001, pp. 59-63

Frances Sands, 2011

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Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation

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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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Contents of Hanover Square, number 18, London: designs for a library wing for the 11th Lord Le Despencer, probably executed, 1766-67 (5)