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Purpose

Egyptian Hall, Mansion House, City of London, 1795 (1). Design for lowering the roof of the Egyptian Hall. Design, close to as executed, dated October 1795

Notes

The Mansion House, the residence of the Lord Mayors of London during their year of office, was built from 1739 to the design of the elder George Dance, the Great or Egyptian Hall being almost complete by 1758. Dry rot was discovered in 1786 and in 1789 the younger Dance reported that a new roof was required, the old one being in a ruinous state, though it was not until the end of 1795 that the work was put in hand. The ceiling was lowered by over 20 feet and a semicircular coffered barrel vault replaced the previous flat ceiling.

For a detailed account of the removal of the attic and lowering of the roof of the Egyptian Hall see Jeffery, 1993, pp.233-6.

For further drawings by George Dance the Younger or his office for the Mansion House see [vol.17,48], [vol.17,12], [vol.16,116], [vol.17,42], [vol.17,52], [vol.17,8], [vol.17,11], [vol.17,51], [vol.16,9].

LITERATURE. S. Jeffery, The Mansion House, 1993.

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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.

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Contents of Egyptian Hall, Mansion House, City of London, 1795 (1). Design for lowering the roof of the Egyptian Hall. Design, close to as executed, dated October 1795