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  • image SM Adam volume 37/45
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Reference number

SM Adam volume 37/45

Purpose

[4] Finished drawing for the first storey of a building, 1764, unexecuted

Aspect

Plan of the first storey of a twenty-one by fifteen-bay building, formed around an off-axis court yard which is surrounded by passages on three sides leading to rooms beyond. The southwest range has canted bays, and has rooms which include bedchambers, dressing rooms and a chapel. To the northwest there is an octagonal space with apses, which is divided to form domestic bedrooms. To the southeast there is a circular dressing room with apses. The rooms in the northwest range include further domestic bedrooms and a laundry. The rooms to the northeast include a circular, colonnaded bedchamber with circular closets and a staircase, further bedchambers, dressing rooms, and an octagonal bedchamber with niches, circular closets and a staircase. The rooms in the southeast range contain further bedchambers and dressing rooms, divided by a central passage. The towers to the southeast are projecting, with two-bay link blocks, and form an irregular façade

Scale

bar scale of 3/4 inch to 10 feet

Inscribed

Plan of the Bed Chamber Story of Luton Castle in Bedfordshire- / one of the seats of the Earl of Bute (in the hand of William Adam, underwritten in pencil)/ Bed Chamber / Closet / Dressing room / Bed Chamr / Passage / Dress.g room / Dress.g room / Bed Chamber / Bed Chamber / My Lord's Dressing room / My Lord's Bed Chamber / Closet / Anti room / Bed Cham.r / Bed Chamber / Bed Cham.r / Passage / Dressing room / Bed Cham.r / Passage / Bed Chamber / Bed room / Dress.g room / Great Stair / Anti room / Dressing room / Bed Cham.r / Private Stairs / Bed Chamber / Closet / Dress.g room - / Water closets / Bed room / chapel / My Lords Servant's Bed room / Common Stewards B. Cham.r / Upper Servant's Bed room / Butlers Bed room / Land stewards Bed Cham.r / Stewards writing closet / Laundry / Extends over all 217. ft. 1. In. / 45 (pencil) and some dimensions given

Signed and dated

  • 1764
    Robt Adam Architect 1764

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil and wash within a single ruled border on laid paper (531 x 506)

Hand

Probably
Robert Adam

Watermark

IHS IVILLEDARY

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, Index, p. 21
Russell, 1992, pp. 44-47
King, 2001, Volume I, p. 12; Volume II, pp. 85, 131, 163
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).