[18] Design for the ground storey of the library, 1788, unexecuted

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Robert and James Adam office drawings
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  - King's College, Cambridge, designs for a chapel altar, new college buildings and a library, 1768-88, unexecuted (28)
    - Designs and finished drawing for the first scheme for the library c1788, unexecuted (3)

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Reference number

SM Adam volume 31/15

Purpose

[18] Design for the ground storey of the library, 1788, unexecuted

Aspect

Plan of the ground storey of an eleven-by-eleven-bay building, with a stepped portico entrance in the principal front. Beyond there is a rectangular hall flanked by apsidal-ended porters’ rooms. The hall links to a circular staircase set within an octagonal block, which also contains closets and water closets. The central octagonal compartment is flanked by single-bay links, which connect to the surrounding wings. The flanking wings contain colonnaded schools and a printing office, and to the rear there are rooms for books. At the rear of the building there is a central stepped entrance and the right and left-hand fronts contain single-bay link blocks. The left-hand link block connects to a nine-bay building with a central stepped entrance flanked by pilasters. Within there is a central, circular hall with apses and columnar screen entrances. To the rear of the hall there are paired, curved staircases and the hall is flanked by register offices and rooms for librarians. The right-hand link-bay connects to the Senate House

Scale

bar scale of 3/4 inch to 10 feet

Inscribed

Design of the Ground Story of a new Library Register & Consistory for the University of Cambridge with Hall School Printing Office Librarians rooms / & shewing the present Senate House which is proposed to make a part of the new Design / New Register office / Anti room / New Register Office / Staircase / Hall / Anti room / Librarians room / New Consistory / Printing Office (underwritten in pencil) / Ware room for Books / Books (pencil) / Room for [_ _ _ _ _ _ _] / School / School / Porters room / Hall / Porters room / Senate House / Kings College Chapel (pencil) / No. 25 (pencil) and some dimensions given

Signed and dated

September 1788
Sep.tr 1788- / A copy of this given to Mr. Stevenson / 28.t May 1789-

Medium and dimensions

Pen and pencil on laid paper (942 x 622)

Hand

Possibly
Office hand, possibly Robert Morison

Verso

5 / 5 / inscription cropped

Watermark

PVL

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, pp. 173-79; Index, p. 6
King, 2001, Volume II, p. 54
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).