Old London Bridge and adjacent streets from the City of London to Southwark, 1799

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George Dance office drawings: the drawings of George Dance the Elder and George Dance the Younger
- Town Planning and London Bridge (8)
  - Old London Bridge and adjacent streets from the City of London to Southwark, 1799 (1). Demonstration drawing

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Reference number

SM D3/12/1

Purpose

Old London Bridge and adjacent streets from the City of London to Southwark, 1799

Aspect

Section showing elevation of houses from Stone's End to Bishopgate Street including elevation of Old London Bridge, Section[s] of Ludgate Hill and Holborn Hill and (flier)The upper part of Snow Hill

Scale

1/13 in to 1 ft

Inscribed

as above. Signed Whole extent about 1¼ Mile. In order to pass over the proposed Variation of London Bridge upon an inclined Plane similar to that of Ludgate Hill the said inclined Plane will intersect the Surface of the Road beyond the Stone's End in the Borough at the distance of 4095 5/13 Feet, from the Center of the proposed great Arch, labelled, dimensions given and (verso) Port of London / Section of Ground from / Bishopgate Street to the Stone's / End Blackman Street / 82
Signed: Verified by Geo: Dance, Architect to the Corporation of London
Dated: May 3^rd 1799

Signed and dated

1799

Medium and dimensions

Pen, raw umber, pink and green earth washes within single ruled border, pricked for transfer on wove paper, three sheets joined (335 x 3835, flier 190 x 480)

Hand

office, some Dance inscriptions

Watermark

(twice) James Whatman Turkey Mill Kent 1794, flier 1794

Notes

The section shows the old 19-arch London Bridge, with starlings, from which the houses and shops have been removed in 1758-62. This was done under the supervision of Sir Robert Taylor and the elder George Dance who also replaced the two central arches with a single span. The section assumes that the centre arch of a new bridge would be 100 Ft high in the clear above high water and with a 300 ft span. The dimensions of the existing bridge were 15 feet high (above high water level) with the central arch about 60 feet wide. 'The futility of attempting to design a bridge with a clear span of 100 feet [sic] and an acceptably gentle slope is demonstrated by Dance in a drawing ten feet long which shows that the bridge would have to be over 1¼ miles in length' (Kalman p.389, n.22).

The demonstration drawing was used as the basis for 'Six Modifications of the General Form and Dimensions of a Bridge of Five Arches' in The Several Plans and Drawings Referred to in the Third Report from the Select Committee upon the improvement of the Port of London, 1800 (see Plate XIII). See also the unexecuted schemes for the Legal Quays and Custom House and New London Bridge.

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.

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