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Reference number

SM volume 19/11

Purpose

Scheme A. Design for a 'Gentleman's Country Seat', c.1757-8

Aspect

[1] Ground floor plan

Scale

1/6 in to 1 ft

Inscribed

(of scale) Feet, rooms labelled and dimensions given

Signed and dated

  • c.1757-8

Medium and dimensions

Pen, light red, yellow and sepia washes within single ruled border (cut) on laid paper (355 x 465)

Hand

Dance, some rooms labelled by Dance the Elder

Watermark

I*Portal and fleur-de-lis in Crowned cartouch LVG below

Notes

Scheme A's overall dimensions, excluding the bowed projections on either side and to the garden, are 63 feet 6 inches by 53 feet. The portico gives on to an entrance-staircase hall that is square (23 feet 3 inches by 22 feet) with the stair along either side and a four-column screen at the far end. An east/west Passage bisects the house leaving the Common Parlour to the northeast balanced by the Kitchen to the northwest. The Withdrawing Room on the garden (south) front has the Library to the east and a China Closet and Dressing Room to the west. Unable to fit in all the necessary accommodation, Dance has planted a Scullery and Pantry on to the kitchen bow and a Privy, approached off a side entrance, now lies beyond the library wall.

The planning is very poor, in particular, the location of the kitchen on the principal floor to the right of the front door. No dining room is marked though perhaps the common parlour was for eating in.
The 'Dance Leoni' volume (in the RIBA Drawings Collection) has six drawings that relate to the project catalogued here. A plan (Dance Leoni No.22) is close to Scheme A except that, for example, the clumsy additions have been avoided and the stair is circular allowing for a lantern dome seen on a front elevation (Dance Leoni No.23).

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).