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  • image SM Adam volume 33/88
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Reference number

SM Adam volume 33/88

Purpose

[6] Design for a house showing the ground storey, c1789, unexecuted

Aspect

Ground plan showing a house and service courts. The house is a three- by four-bay rectangular block, with windows flanking a central bow on the principal front, with both open and blind windows to each side, and a central circular cantilevered staircase. The house contains reception rooms, and the rear elevation is attached to links which have single-bay doors on the front, and an open colonnade on the back, overlooking a central court. To either side of the central court are small rectangular courts, one containing stables, and the other kitchens. There is a rough variant pencil-drawn plan of the house and left-hand link in the right-hand top corner of the sheet, as well as a rough pencil drawn elevation of the principal front along the left-hand edge, and rough annotations provide topography around the central plan

Scale

bar scale of ¾ inch to 10 feet

Inscribed

For Thomas White Esqr (in the hand of William Adam and underwritten in pencil) / (and in feint pencil) [ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ] / [ _ _ _ _ ] / Wood / Wood / Brewhouse / Bake House / [ _ _ _ _ ] House / Laundry / Dairy / Scullery / Larder / Pantry / Scullery / Kitchen / [ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ] room / Water Closet / Hall / Mr Whites room / Staircase / Eating room / Drawing room / Servants Hall / Flowers(?) & [ _ _ _ _ _ ] / Privy / Coals & Wood / Stables / Coach House / Passage / Coach House / Coach House / Stables / Coals & Wood / Coals & Wood / [ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ] / Stable Yard and some measurements given in pencil (verso) [N]o 5

Signed and dated

  • 1789
    datable to c1789

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil and wash on laid paper (476 x 586)

Hand

Adam office hand, possibly Robert Morison or Daniel Robertson, with title inscription in the hand of William Adam (and underwritten in pencil)

Watermark

PORTAL&BRIDGES and GR surmounted by fleur de lis within crowned cartouche

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, Index p. 58
King, 2001, Volume II, p. 136
For a full list of literature references see scheme notes.

Level

Drawing

Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation

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).