[4] Design for the north front of the house, 1789, possibly executed

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Robert and James Adam office drawings
- Country houses
  - Ruscombe House, Berkshire, designs for alterations to a house and for offices for Sir James Eyre, 1789, possibly executed (12)
    - Designs for the west, north and south fronts of the house, 1789, possibly executed (5)

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Reference number

SM Adam volume 29/63

Purpose

[4] Design for the north front of the house, 1789, possibly executed

Aspect

Elevation of a two-and-a-half-storey, seven-bay building, with a flat roof and string courses of Vitruvian scroll and fluting, and a frieze of rosettes. The first and seventh bays form projecting pavilions, with rustication at the ground storey level. At the first storey level there is a balustraded Venetian window, flanked by paterae, and with a frieze of guilloche enclosing rosettes above. This is surmounted by a tablet containing a roundel flanked by festoons. To the west, there is a side elevation of the single-bay portico in SM Adam volume 29/62

Scale

bar scale of 1 1/4 inches to 10 feet

Inscribed

Design for altering the North front of Ruscomb House- / (in the hand of William Adam, underwritten in pencil) the seat of Lord Chief Baron Eyre and some figures given

Signed and dated

May 1789
Albemarle Street / 30.t May 1789

Medium and dimensions

Pen and pencil on laid paper (481 x 275)

Hand

Possibly
Office hand, possibly Daniel Robertson or Robert Morison, with part title inscription in the hand of William Adam

Watermark

GR surmounted by a fleur-de-lis within a crowned cartouche

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, Index, p. 27
King, 2001, Volume I, p. 393; Volume II, p. 13
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).