Giltspur Street Compter (Debtors' Prison), City of London, 1787

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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)
  - Giltspur Street Compter (Debtors' Prison), City of London, 1787 Design not as executed, contract drawings for crenellated design, revised designs and working drawings (37)

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Reference number

SM D4/3/32

Purpose

Giltspur Street Compter (Debtors' Prison), City of London, 1787

Aspect

[1] Ground plan with site shown

Scale

1/16 in to 1 ft

Inscribed

labelled North, East, Gilt Spur Street, S^t Sepulcher's Church, Newgate Street, Part of Newgate, M^r Newman's Premises, Common side Debtors, N^o.60 Men, Tower containing N^o.40 Cells / for Fellons, Common side / Debtors / N^o.10 Women / Yard, rooms for / better sort / of / Felons / for / Trial / Yard, Master side N^o.25 Men / Debtors, Stairs to / Rooms for Night Charges / Men, Stairs to / Night Charges / Women, Kitchen, Turnkey, Office, Sheriff's Office, dimensions given and (verso) Compter / Giltspur & Newg^te / Streets and Plan with / Tower

Signed and dated

1787

Medium and dimensions

Pen, light red and sepia washes, pencil within double ruled border, partly pricked for transfer, on laid paper (660 x 580)

Hand

Dance

Watermark

J Whatman

Notes

The principal front faces south on to Newgate Street (rather than Giltspur Street as in the built design) with a perimeter wall running east, west and north enclosing four ranges of buildings that, in turn, enclose an inner walled area with a tower for 40 male prisoners. Four cells with two lobbies are shown on the ground floor of the tower and, assuming six cells for the other floors, the tower would have been seven storeys high. The plan is circular, with a circular staircase in the centre, and six compartments arranged, radially, each with a projecting straight-sided bay. Stroud ('The Giltspur Street Compter', Architectural History, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, XXVII, 1984, p.129) suggests that the tower arrangement brings to mind Jeremy Bentham's 'Panoptical Principle', published in 1791 but long meditated and also discussed with the penal reformer John Howard, a friend of Dance who drew his portrait.

A model was made of the scheme for committee approval on 16 March 1786, but the estimated cost of £39,000 was too high and Dance was asked to prepare a revised design with accommodation for 136 prisoners that was not to exceed £25,000.

REPRODUCED. D Stroud, 'The Giltspur Street Compter', Architectural History, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, XXVII, 1984, fig.1.

Level

Drawing

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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.

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).