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  • image SM Adam volume 29/45

Reference number

SM Adam volume 29/45

Purpose

[7] Design for a house, c1770, unexecuted

Aspect

Longitudinal section of a three-storey building with a hipped roof and a sunken basement storey. At the basement storey there is a central, barrel vaulted passage flanked by barrel vaulted rooms and further passages. Beyond this there are rooms with fireplaces. There is a lower basement-storey level in the western part of the building, and this contains a large, barrel vaulted room. On the ground storey there is a central room with a doorway set within a relieving arch. To the east there is a room with a central entrance surmounted by a cornice, and this is set within and apse and behind and Ionic screen. The room to the east has a coved ceiling. On the first storey there is a series of rooms with fireplaces, and in the attic-storey level there are further rooms with fireplaces. Flanking the central building there are two-storey, balustraded link blocks. The block to the east contains a spiral staircase, and there is a link passage on the first storey. The link building to the west contains a spiral staircase and a link passage, and the staircase extends to the lower basement storey of the principal building and the western pavilion. The pavilions have hipped roofs, and the pavilion to the east has a tripartite window on the first storey, and a central passage lit by a semi-circular window flanked by rooms in the attic storey. The pavilion to the west has a basement-storey level consisting of vaulted rooms. On the ground storey there is a Diocletian window flanked by half-height windows, and on the first storey there is a Venetian window articulated by Ionic columns. In the attic storey there is a central passage flanked by rooms

Scale

bar scale of 2 inches to 10 feet

Inscribed

Section from East to West on the Dotted Line on the Plan shewing the inside of the House Wings and Passages (underwritten in pencil) (and in the hand of William Adam, underwritten in pencil) for John Radcliffe Esqr

Signed and dated

  • c1770
    c1770

Medium and dimensions

Pen and pencil on laid paper (1163 x 494)

Hand

Possibly
Office hand, with part title inscription in the hand of William Adam

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, Index p. 18
Rowan, 1984, pp. 44-45
King, 2001, Volume II, p. 127
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).