[3] Alternative preliminary design for the principal (north) front of a house, c1788, unexecuted

Explore Collections

You are here: CollectionsOnline / [3] Alternative preliminary design for the principal (north) front of a house, c1788, unexecuted

Browse

Robert and James Adam office drawings
- Country houses
  - Beckenham Rectory, Beckenham, Kent, designs for a house for the Reverend William Rose, c1788, executed (24)
    - Alternative preliminary designs and design for the principal (north) front of a house, c1788, unexecuted (3)

Use of images and copyright
Enlarge this Image

Print this image in A4 view

Reference number

SM Adam volume 4/40

Purpose

[3] Alternative preliminary design for the principal (north) front of a house, c1788, unexecuted

Aspect

Above – Elevation of a three-storey, three-bay building, with a hipped roof. On the ground storey, in the central bay, there is a pedimented, Tuscan porte cochère with a frieze of roundels. This is flanked by windows in the first and third bays, set within relieving arches. Above this there is a string course, ornamented with Vitruvian scroll, which is repeated at the attic storey level. At the first storey level, in the central bay, there is a window set behind an Ionic screen, with capitals containing roundels and a fluted frieze. Above this there is a central fan light, flanked by roundels. In the first and third bays there are further windows, flanked by giant Ionic pilasters, and with half-height windows in the attic register. The building has a fluted frieze, and the first and third bays are surmounted by plinths supporting recumbent sphinxes Below – Plan of the porte cochére, stepped entrance and windows on the ground storey level

Scale

bar scale of 1 1/2 inches to 10 feet

Inscribed

North Front of the Parsonage house at Beckenham and some dimensions given

Signed and dated

c1788
c1788

Medium and dimensions

Pen and pencil on laid paper (220 x 334)

Hand

Probably
Robert Adam

Verso

Preliminary designs for a bridge? and a tympanum

Watermark

Fleur-de-lis within a crowned cartouche

Literature

Rowan, 1985, p. 66
King, 2001, Volume II, p. 122
For a full list of literature references see scheme notes.

Level

Drawing

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).