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  • image SM 37/1/21

Reference number

SM 37/1/21

Purpose

Survey of the Palace of Westminster with design for alterations overlaid, September 1793

Aspect

Site plan

Scale

bar scale of 1/4 inch to 10 feet

Inscribed

labelled: Pier of / Bridge (twice), Stationary / Office, Bridge Street, Court, Parliament Street, New Palace Yard, Gateway, late the / Cofferers Office, Garden, Auditors / of Land / Revenue, Sheds, Privies, Mr Langton's / House, Garden, Garden, Mr Roberts, Lord Barham, St Stephens Court, Gateway, Coachouse (sic), Stables belonging / to the Auditor, Tower, Court, Auditor of Exchequer, Garden to the Auditors House, Coffee / House, Tower, Low / Sheds / Public / House, Public / House, Court, Court / of / Exchequer, Inner Court / of Excheqr, Court, Court / of / Common / Pleas, Judges / Room, Court, Judges / Coachouse, Kings Bench Records, Court, Supts / Room, King's / Bench / Off[ice], Servants / Room, Court, Mr Ley Assistt Clerk / of House of Commons, Election / Committee / Room, Election / Comm / Room, Saint Margaret's Street, Ordnance Office, King Henry 7ths / Chapel, Mr Wilberforce, Mr Wharton, Mr Cowper, Mr Rose, Abingdon Street, Old Palace Yard, Mr Bennett's, Mr Bellamy, Coffee Ho[use], Lord / Chancells / Room, Wait Room, Court / of / Chancery, Court / of / Kings Bench, Westminster Hall / 237'9'' whole length, Lobby, House / of / Commons, Court of Requests, Long Gallery, Flat / over / Kitchen, Mr Hatsell's / House, Mr Hatsell's Gardn, Cotton Garden, Mr ?Rose's / Garden, Mr / Delavals / Garden / &c, Mr Delavals / House &c, late Parliament / Stairs, Yard, Stable, Garden, Chan / cellor / Room, Ho. keeper, Clerks / Room (3 times), Court, Earl Marshalls / Room, Bishops / Room, Chan / cellor, Court, Sir P. / Burrells / Room, Parliament Passage, Passage, Lobby (twice), House of Lords, Princes / Chamber, Passage, Black Rod / Room, Lobby, Lords / ?Committee / Room, Waghorns, Mem. The Floor of the House of Commons is / 6ft1½ above the Floor of the Bar of the House / of Lords and 17ft8 above the Floor / of Westminster Hall and dimensions given

Signed and dated

  • September 1793
    IS [John Soane] Great Scotland Yard September 1793

Medium and dimensions

Pen, red pen, black, sepia and blue washes within single ruled border on laid paper backed with stout wove paper (492 x 603)

Notes

In August 1793 Soane, as Clerk of Works at St James's, Whitehall and Westminster, was directed to provide survery plans of the Palace of Westminster to the twelve architects who had been invited to make designs for a new House of Lords. This design, dated 'September 1793', is likely to be the same as that supplied to the dozen architects. Although Soane was not invited to submit a design himself, the outline of a substantial new block has been added to this drawing in red pen. The principal front to this new block faces the river with a tetrastyle portico in antis. Soane was later officially asked to make designs for a new House of Lords in June 1794.

Tom Drysdale, October 2014

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).