Design for a porter’s lodge with gates, 1794, executed to a variant design (1)

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Robert and James Adam office drawings
- Country houses
  - Dalkeith House, Midlothian: executed designs for a bridge and porter’s lodge with gates, and an unexecuted design for a sundial, for Henry Scott, 3rd Duke of Buccleuch, c.1791-94 (8)

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Design for a porter’s lodge with gates, 1794, executed to a variant design (1)

Notes

James Adam made two designs for this entrance lodge and gates in 1794, one is in the Soane collection (SM Adam volume 51/62) and the other is the client’s drawing within the Buccleuch archives. The latter design was executed, however, McWilliam's Lothian (1978) has incorrectly attributed the gates, sometimes known as ‘Duke’s Gates’, to the architect James Playfair (1755-1794). Playfair was commissioned to design a bow window for the library at Dalkeith House as well as a pair of lodges and gates in 1786, the window was executed but the lodges and gate appear not to have been. Both sets of Playfair’s designs are in the Soane Collection (SM 78/7/1-6 & 78/8/1-10).

James Adam’s designs comprise a single rectangular lodge with an adjoining screen wall and gates. The design in SM Adam volume 51/62, contains a semi-circular porch with a bedroom and sitting room of equal proportion beyond. King notes that James’s design gives the porter more generous accommodation than Robert Adam would have generally allowed. Adjoining the lodge are the screen wall and gates containing a pair of arch-in-grid gates between two piers flanked by screen walls followed by lower, quadrant walls containing openings.

The lodge was executed to an alternative design (the client’s drawing in the Buccleuch archives) which includes a simple three-bay square porch instead of the semi-circular porch, with internal angled entrances into the bedroom and sitting room. The entire elevation lacks the decoration shown in SM Adam volume 51/62, opting for a simple moulded band across the lodge and screen walls and fluted friezes on the piers. The outer piers are surmounted with stags whilst the inner piers have less elaborate lamps. Upon execution, the stags were omitted and lamps were added to all four piers. The lodge has since been extended and reroofed and is registered B on the Scotland National Heritage Register.

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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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Contents of Design for a porter’s lodge with gates, 1794, executed to a variant design (1)

[8] Finished drawing for a lodge with gates, 1794, executed to a variant design