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Bank of Scotland, designs for a building, c.1788-93, execution status unknown (2)

Notes

The Bank of Scotland was established in 1695 by an Act of Parliament of Scotland to develop trade with other countries and create a stable banking system in Scotland. They were the first commercial bank to issue paper currency in 1696. The bank was based in the capital, Edinburgh, but was able to expand across 27 branches in Scotland between 1774 and 1795.

There are two undated and unsigned drawings for a Bank of Scotland building by the Adam office in the Soane collection. These comprise an elevation for the front of a bank and a plan for the principal floor. It is not known if these designs were ever carried out, or where the proposed building was supposed to be. Bolton suggests that the bank was likely to have been designed for a site in Edinburgh. King suggests the designs may have been for The Mound, a sloped site to the south of Princes Street connecting the Old and New towns. The Bank of Scotland had been searching for a new site in Edinburgh for some time, and eventually bought this land in 1800 and appointed Robert Reid and Richard Crichton to design the new building. Without basement plans or sections, it is not possible to confirm if these drawings were for this specific site. It is also possible that the designs could relate to the other branches that were opened across Scotland in the late-eighteenth century. There is no further information, although the Adams' association with the Governor of the bank at the time, Henry Dundas, could have played a part in them being asked to design a new building. A proposed date of 1788-93 for the drawings has been suggested by the Bank’s archivist, as detailed in King, which coincides with the dates of the bank’s expansion towards the end of the eighteenth century.

Literature: A.T. Bolton, The Architecture of Robert and James Adam, Volume II, Index, 1922, p. 59; D. King, The Complete Works of Robert & James Adam and Unbuilt Adam, Volume 2, 2001, p. 54; A. J. Youngson, The Making of Classical Edinburgh 1750-1840, 1966, pp. 160-162

Louisa Catt, 2023

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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 Bank of Scotland, designs for a building, c.1788-93, execution status unknown (2)