On May 27th 1800 Soane went to inspect a plot of land in Acton belonging to Mr Selby. He was to buy the property for £500 with the intention of building himself a country villa. According to the office Day Books, Seward and Sword were employed in making drawings for the new house from the 28th May on. Soane developed a sequence of alternative designs for the Acton villa (see Summerson’s account and the relevant drawings in the collection catalogued in 2010 into schemes for villas A to F). Model M1146 illustrates villa F. The drawings that best relate to this scheme are 31/1/11-15 and 31/3/39.

Work on the design progressed steadily, with Seward or Sword or both ‘About plans for House’ for Mr Soane almost daily. By August 2nd, however, Soane had heard that Pitzhanger Manor would shortly be up for sale, for on that day it is recorded that Seward ‘went to Ealing to take Plans of Mr Gurnells House’. The Acton villa design was not immediately abandoned: indeed Summerson suggests that the design was adapted to suit the requirements for Pitzhanger.

The close association of the models with particular groups of drawings leads us to suppose that they are of much the same date; they were probably made between July and August 1800 when their respective designs were evolved.

In Pursuit of Antiquity: Drawings by the Giants of British Neo-Classicism, Sir John Soane's Museum, 1 February - 1 June 2008; Tchoban Foundation Museum für Architekturzeichnung, Berlin, 3 October 2015 - 14 February 2016
Building a Dialogue: The Architect and the Client, Sir John Soane's Museum, London, 17 February - 9 May 2015