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 D4/3/35

Purpose

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

Aspect

[2] Ground plan

Scale

1/8 in to 1 ft

Inscribed

Plan of the Ground Floor, This Building will contain / Men Felons in seperate Cells 12 / Women Do --- in Do --- 8 / 20 / Night Charges men --- 20 / Do --- Women ---20 / 40 / Common side Debtors men --- 48 / Do --- Women 12 / 60 / Masterside Debtors --- 16 / 16 / Total 136, labelled including Kitchen, Office, Lodge, Turnkey, Sheriffs / Office, dimensions given (some by Dance) and (verso) [Gro]und Plan, approved of (cut) Day by Committee for / [bui]lding a new Compter / (cut) Giltspur Street Signed: Geo: Dance / Tho' Poynder (bricklayer) / W^m Hughes (carpenter) / W^m Hopcraft (mason) / John Poynder (plumber) / Th^s Downes (blacksmith) / Thomas Silk (plasterer) / John Judgson / Wm Bates / Tho Wheeler Dated: (Dance) This Plan was agreed upon / March 27th 1787 and (contract signatures) 16th of June 1787

Signed and dated

1787

Medium and dimensions

Pen, sepia washes, pencil within double ruled border, pricked for transfer on coarse laid paper, with seven old patches (705 x 890)

Hand

Dance

Notes

The plan shows accommodation for 136 prisoners. There are now nine lots for shops and houses on Newgate Street to be let on building Leases; each has a 17 foot frontage and is between 39 and 54 feet deep. These shops and house were intended to raise revenue for the Corporation of London.

REPRODUCED. D. Stroud, ' The Giltspur Street Compter', Architectural History, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, XXVII, 1984, fig.2b.

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).