[7] Plans of alterations to ground and first floors

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Town houses
  - London: No. 49 (formerly 44) Grosvenor Square: alterations for the Dowager Countess of Pembroke, 1797-9 (18)
    - Survey and design drawings, 1797-8 (10)

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Reference number

SM 39/1/48

Purpose

[7] Plans of alterations to ground and first floors

Aspect

Plans / with / Proposed Alterations, The Ground Floor and The one Pair Floor

Scale

bar scale of 1/8 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

as above, The Countess of Pembroke, labelled: Dining Room, Hall, Anti Room, Water / Closet, Library, Area, Garden, Stable, Coachouse and Drawing Room, Anti Room, Dressing Room, Water Closet, Bed Chamber

Medium and dimensions

Pen, sepia, light red and blue washes with quadruple ruled and black wash border, partly pricked for transfer on laid paper with one fold mark (703 x 510)

Hand

George Mansfield, surveyor 1 May 1797 - December 1800

Watermark

I Taylor, fleur de lis within crowned cartouche and below, GR 1794

Notes

The proposal here is to extend the back part of the house by about 17 feet. This would alllow for an extra bedroom on the first floor measuring 28:6 by 16:0 feet. On the ground floor the extant library was to be moved forwards into the garden which would permit (in the middle of the house) the addition of a water closet and the enlargement of the ante room between the entrance hall and library. From the specification (see drawing [8]) it seems this idea was not carried out. The Survey of London, volume XL, p.162 describes the proposed new library 'as completely recast .... The eastern wall was curved, and although the old fittings were removed they were echoed in the repeated round-headed mostifs of Soane's finely judged wall designs, where they were delicately juxtaposed to segmental and rectangular forms, and created an effect reminiscent of a Roman catacomb.'

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.

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