Newgate Gaol, Newgate Street, City of London, 1768-c.1813

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George Dance office drawings: the drawings of George Dance the Elder and George Dance the Younger
- Prison, courts and a lunatic hospital (5)
  - Newgate Gaol, Newgate Street, City of London, 1768-c.1813 (25)

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Reference number

SM D4/4/1

Purpose

Newgate Gaol, Newgate Street, City of London, 1768-c.1813

Aspect

[2] Ground floor PLAN and ELEVATION of a design for the GAOL of NEWGATE and ground floor plan of the Sessions House

Scale

1/13 in to 1 ft

Inscribed

Inscribed as above, and key: A Keepers House / B Lodge to Felons Prison / C Tap Room for the Men / Felons / D Common Room / E Stair cases / F Privys / G Cells to confine the most /refractory Prisoners / H Lodge to the Debtors / Prison / I Tap Room for the Debtors / K ditto for the Women Felons, labelled including Present Cells for Condemned / Prisoners and lettered A to K Signed: James Hodges (Sir James Hodges, Town Clerk of the City of London, knighted 1759, died 1774)

Signed and dated

1768-c.1813

Medium and dimensions

Black and red pen, sepia and raw umber washes, shaded on laid paper, two sheets joined, recently lined and filled (470 x 1040)

Hand

Baldwin

Watermark

JVilledary (twice) and fleur-de-lis in crowned cartouche and LVG below

Notes

The plan of the Gaol is organised around three courtyards each with a circular pool. The larger central courtyard is pushed back so that it is fronted by the Chapel and the Keeper's House, with entrances either side. This plan is almost as built while the elevation is simpler than in succeeding designs so that, except for the Keeper's House in the centre, it is almost blank. As recorded on 15 April 1768 in the minutes book of the Committee for Rebuilding the Gaol of Newgate (CRLO, ₃₃C). Dance was instructed to make some alterations to his design and these were all concerned with changes to the elevations.

The plan for the Sessions House shows it is a separate structure linked to the Gaol by a wall with gateways. See also the preliminary design for Newgate Sessions House, c.1768.

REPRODUCED. J. Summerson, 'Newgate Gaol: catalogue of drawings in Sir John Soane's Museum', Architectural History, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, II, 1959, p.45 (in part); H. D. Kalman, 'Newgate Prison', Architectural History, Journal of the Society of ArchitecturallHistorians of Great Britain, XII, 1969, fig.30b (in part).

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).