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Purpose

Alternative (unexecuted) design for the dairy showing rusticated portico facing the lawn, and working drawing for the offices (1)

Notes

Drawing 9 shows a more decorative design in keeping with the 18th century fashion for elaborate and ornamented dairies (see notes for drawing 6). The built dairy was simpler, as in drawing 6. In drawing 9, the entrance faces the lawn, perhaps distinguishing it from the other buildings on the office court and presenting it as the 'polite pavillion' dairy appropriate for the occupation of ladies (J.M. Robinson). A rusticated Tuscan portico faces the lawn, with blind round-headed arches to either side. The pediment is lined with a heavy raking cornice and faced with a decorative plaque depicting a cow. The opposite elevation, towards the office court, also has a decorative pediment centred on the symmetrical elevation. This court-facing entrance has a partly enclosed area before the door, overlooked within by a wide raised segmental window. The window have lit the dairy with indirect light, thus maintaining a cool temperature inside. Sheltered outdoor spaces were useful in dairies for drying the frequently-washed utensils (Papworth).

The layout of the dairy in drawing 9 corresponds with drawing 6, having a symmetrical plan facing the office court. Unlike drawing 6, however, the centre range has a door at either end with no communication to the adjoining rooms (see drawing 10 for finishings in a similar design).

The verso of drawing 9 is the only plan of the office court. A long narrow building of nine bays enclosed one side of the court, its rear elevation facing the back of the mansion house. Mansion, office court and stables were arranged on axis and connected by a brick wall. Drawing 9 has, in rough ink, the kitchen and entrance gate on one side of the court and the dairy building opposite. The nine-bay two storey office building has a washhouse, laundry, bakehouse, brewery and small stable. Its exterior is faced with windows set within round-headed relief arches of gauged brick.

Literature

W. Papworth ed., The Dictionary of architecture, published in parts 1848-1892, volume II; J. M. Robinson, Georgian Model Farms: a study of decorative and model farm buildings in the Age of Improvement, 1700-1846, 1983, pp. 92-100.

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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.

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Contents of Alternative (unexecuted) design for the dairy showing rusticated portico facing the lawn, and working drawing for the offices (1)