Explore Collections Explore The Collections
You are here: CollectionsOnline  /  Alterations to the House of Lords to increase accommodation for the trial of Queen Caroline, 1820 (16)

Purpose

Alterations to the House of Lords to increase accommodation for the trial of Queen Caroline, 1820 (16)

Notes

Soane's first project at the House of Lords following the accession of George IV to the throne in 1820 (but before his coronation) was to adapt the House for the trial of the king's estranged wife, Queen Caroline. All peers, bishops and judges were required to attend the trial and consequently Soane was directed to make alterations to increase the accommodation of the House. He designed two galleries which were to be erected over the benches on either side of the chamber, supported by iron columns and hung with crimson cloths. One drawing (SM 51/3/60) gives the capacity with the new galleries as 290 (excluding the woolsacks). The work was completed within the space of two weeks at the beginning of August at a cost of £921 11s 3d. Catalogued here are survey drawings, designs, details and record drawings of the galleries. Soane's arrangements are recorded in a painting of the trial by George Hayter (1792-1871) in the National Portrait Gallery, London.

Literature:
J. M. Crook and M. H. Port (eds), The History of the King's Works, VI, 1973, pp. 519-20; R. A. Melikan, 'Pains and penalties procedure: how the House of Lords 'tried' Queen Caroline' in R. A. Melikan (ed.), Domestic and International Trials, 1700-2000, 2003, pp. 54-75; T. Jenkins, 'The Queen Caroline Affair, 1820', <www.historyofparliamentonline.org>

Level

Sub-sub-scheme

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 Alterations to the House of Lords to increase accommodation for the trial of Queen Caroline, 1820 (16)