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  • image SM 51/3/31
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Reference number

SM 51/3/31

Purpose

Design for substantial alterations and additions to the Palace of Westminster, October 1827

Aspect

Block site plan with new additions overlaid

Scale

bar scale of 1/6 inch to 10 feet

Signed and dated

  • October 1827
    (pencil) Octr 1827

Medium and dimensions

Pen, black, grey, pink, blue and burnt umber washes on laid paper (290 x 473)

Hand

Stephen Burchell (1806 - c.1843)
Pupil January 1823 - April 1828.

Watermark

fleur-de-lis above cartouche with bar and below, ornate CA

Notes

Having completed substantial alterations and additions to the Palace of Westminster, including a new Royal Entrance, Scala Regia, Royal Gallery, library and committee rooms for the House of Lords (in light sepia wash to the left of the sheet), Soane's new design is for a proposal to completely rebuild the House of Lords and House of Commons, save for the medieval core. The new design is, in fact, based on old designs made by Soane in 1794-5 and drawn by J. M. Gandy (1771-1843) in 1807 (q.v. Soane: Office of Works: London: House of Lords, Palace of Westminster: unofficial (mostly domed) designs: drawings 36-38) with the principal front facing the river. The design seems to have been resurrected in 1827 and was still being considered by Soane after 1831 (see SM 51/3/35-36).

Level

Drawing

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).