Although only two of these drawings are inscribed with dates (and those two years apart), the 1801 watermarks of the others suggest that this group was made within the period that Soane lived at Pitzhanger.

The ruin was evidently a concept that occupied Soane's mind. He later wrote a description of his house at Lincoln's Inn Fields from a future perspective with the house in ruins. At Pitzhanger Soane constructed actual ruins, establishing an architectural lineage and an imaginary past for his house. The ruins also provided a source of amusement for guests and for Soane himself, watching the reaction of such guests to the planted fake antiquity.

Christopher Woodward suggests many sources and influences that throw light on Soane's interest in ruins, among them Thomas Sandby's designs for ruins at Virginia Water (1760s), Hypnerotomachia Poliphili 'in which Francesco Colanna created an hallucinatory world of classical ruins and gardens' and the many Piranesi engravings of Roman ruins within Soane's own collection. The apparent model for the ruins at Pitzhanger was the Temple of Clitumnus at Spoleto, which had a first floor door for priests or magi to preach from - as Soane's ruins indicate different levels of triumphal arch and temple.

Interestingly there are no surviving working drawings for the construction of the ruins, presumably because their construction was less technical than that of the house itself.

For further information on the ruins see Section 12, drawings 264 to 285.