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  • image Image 1 for SM D5/3/34 verso, and versos also of SM D1/12/6, SM D2/8/19, SM D5/5/28
  • image Image 2 for SM D5/3/34 verso, and versos also of SM D1/12/6, SM D2/8/19, SM D5/5/28
  • image Image 3 for SM D5/3/34 verso, and versos also of SM D1/12/6, SM D2/8/19, SM D5/5/28
  • image Image 4 for SM D5/3/34 verso, and versos also of SM D1/12/6, SM D2/8/19, SM D5/5/28
  • image Image 1 for SM D5/3/34 verso, and versos also of SM D1/12/6, SM D2/8/19, SM D5/5/28
  • image Image 2 for SM D5/3/34 verso, and versos also of SM D1/12/6, SM D2/8/19, SM D5/5/28
  • image Image 3 for SM D5/3/34 verso, and versos also of SM D1/12/6, SM D2/8/19, SM D5/5/28
  • image Image 4 for SM D5/3/34 verso, and versos also of SM D1/12/6, SM D2/8/19, SM D5/5/28

Reference number

SM D5/3/34 verso, and versos also of SM D1/12/6, SM D2/8/19, SM D5/5/28

Purpose

Camden Estate, Camden, London, c.1790

Aspect

[1] Engraved plan of scheme for the development of the Camden Estate

Scale

3/8 in to 100 ft

Inscribed

labelled and N point

Signed and dated

  • 1790

Medium and dimensions

Engraved on laid paper (480 x 610)

Watermark

J Whatman and fleur-de-lis in crowned cartouche and W below

Notes

Dance used the back of the print for a drawing for the Royal College of Surgeons ([SM D5/3/34]); the same print was used for another drawing for the same scheme ([SM D5/5/28]), and others for Coleorton ([SM D1/12/6]) and Langdown House ([SM D2/8/19]), four in all. The purpose of the engraved print was probably as an advertisement to speculative builders and others.

The plan is labelled with some existing roads viz. (west side) Road from London to Hampstead, Mothr Redcaps (Mother Red Cap, a public house), Present Road to Kentish Town, (east side) Present Road from Pancras and From Pancras to Kentish Town.

Today, the boundary of the former Camden estate runs from just below Camden underground station up Kentish Town Road to south of Bartholomew Road, turning right to go north of Camden Road, then east following the line of York Way before curving west on the south of Agar Grove and looping to the east end of Crowndale Road and returning to Camden High Street (G. Bebbington, London street names, 1972, estate maps section).

REPRODUCED. J Summerson, Heavenly mansions, 1949, fig.8; G. Teyssot, Città e utopia nell'illuminismo inglese: George Dance il giovane, Rome, 1974, fig.127; J. Summerson 'The Beginning of an early Victorian suburb', London Topographical Record, XXVII, 1995, fig.9.

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).