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  • image SM Adam volume 37/87

Reference number

SM Adam volume 37/87

Purpose

[8] Design for a house, stable offices, cottages and grounds, c1778, unexecuted

Aspect

Plan of the ground floor of a building as SM Adam volume 37/84. The building is flanked by walled courtyards and the principal front is approached by a semi-circular carriage way. Beyond this, paired steps lead down into a formal garden with curved pathways which lead to a stepped, curved monument or seat, set behind a colonnade. All this is enclosed by walls and at the entrances to the carriage way there are turrets containing circular staircases. To the right of the formal gardens there are a series of stable courtyards and coach houses. Along West Street there are nine tenement cottages, consisting of two rooms, a passageway and staircases leading to the upper floor. Eight of the cottages have yards to the rear, which contain privies. At the corner of West Street and adjacent to the stable courts there is an additional, semi-circular shaped cottage, with a left-hand entrance set behind a colonnade. The cottage is formed of a central room flanked by an apsidal-ended room and a passage linking to a semi-circular staircase. To the rear of the cottage there is a triangular-shaped yard containing a privy

Scale

bar scale of 1/2 inches to 10 feet

Inscribed

2.d Design of a House for John Robinson Esquire / at Harwich, shewing its proposed Situations as removed / backwards, not to intercept the View of the Light House / at the entrance of the River, also the two tenements to be let where the present House stands, & ten tenements / for the Poor in West Street extending from the Light / House Gate to the Square, & a Court of Stable Offices / round that Area called the Square, with Flower and Kitchen Gardens & the present Fossee(?) converted into a Shrubbery &c- / Court / Drawing room / Eating room / Hall / Dress.g room / Library / Court / Stable Court / Stable / Harness room / Coach House / Coach House / Coach House / Stable / Stable Court / No. 26 (brown ink)

Signed and dated

  • c1778
    c1778

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil, wash and coloured washes including verdigris, olive green, Naples yellow and pink on laid paper (786 x 630)

Hand

Possibly
Office hand, possibly Joseph Bonomi or Robert Morison

Verso

Number 18 (brown ink) / 18 (pencil) / Harwich House (in the hand of William Adam, pencil) / John Robinson Esqr / Harwich Plans / 7

Watermark

PVL

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, Index, p. 17
King, 2001, Volume II, p. 245
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).