[9] Alternative design, December 1792

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Office of Works
  - London: St James's Palace: surveys, designs and design for the new Guard Room, 1792-93 (18)

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Reference number

SM 37/2/3

Purpose

[9] Alternative design, December 1792

Aspect

Plan A of kitchen and other buildings including the Gentleman Pensioners, Pastry, Engine Court and Arcade and with a proposed semi-elliptical guard room

Scale

bar scale of 1/8 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

as above, St James's, labelled A A B C D E F G H, Chaplain, Bread Pantry, Passage, Lobby, Guard Room, Beds (6 times), Closet / for / Ammunition, Chimney, Staircase / to / Officers / Apartments, Entrance / for the / Officers, Serjeants / Room, Guard Room, 40 feet by 29 feet, Kings Kitchen and some dimensions given. Soane's description and calculations read: New Part pf Guard Room / to be cover'd with Copper / to be twelve feet high / and arched beneath / the floor // The old Part converted / into Guard Room to / be also arched beneath the floor / The present Entrance to the Pastry to be made the / Entrance to the Staircase / leading to the Officers / Apartments, and another / Entrance to the Pastry to / be made at B & if that / is thought inconvenient it may be made at C without / injuring the light // The present door D to be removed / to E for the convenience of the / Bed // F This Arcade would greatly / contribute to the accommodation / of the Soldiers // G Window to be made over the Cistern / to light part of the Guard Room. // H Window to be made from the Serjeants / Room into the Center Guard Room, (and right-hand side) This plan contains / Feet Runni^g/ 70 / 16.6 / 16.6 / 18 [total] 121:0 / If Beds at A A add 20 / Total 141:0 / Superficial feet / 437.6 / 100 / 100 / 175 / [total] 812:6 / A 61.6 / A 61.6 / Total 935:6

Signed and dated

John Soane Arch^t Dec^r 1792 / Great Scotland Yard

Medium and dimensions

Pen, sepia, blue and light red washes with triple ruled and sepia wash border on laid paper (428 x 545)

Hand

Soane office hand (also drawings [13]-[15], [18]) with some Soane labels and Soane calculations

Watermark

J Buttanshaw, fleur-de-lis above cartouche with bar and below, GR

Notes

While the subsidary spaces remain the same, the guard house is rectangular (39 x 18 feet) in design B (drawing [10]) and semi-elliptical (40 x 29 feet) in Design A. There is a considerable contrast between the rather pinched rectangle filled with bed space and with three windows on one side and one on another (design B) and the (almost) horseshoe-shaped alternative (design A) with seven windows, the plan shape emphasised by the bed space layout and with a generous five foot circular skylight. (JL)

Level

Drawing

Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation

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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.

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).