Sequence of drawings:
1-29 Plans:
1-3 Survey plans
4-5 'Approved' plan dated 5 January 1805 and copy dated 25 June 1806
6 Intermediate design
7-9 Plans for anatomy theatre and museum
10 Survey plan of second floor
11 Foundations plan
12-18 S end of site (Portugal Street)
19-23 Phase 1 - excluding the N end facing Lincoln's Inn Fields [SM D5/1/19] dated 15 September 1806
24-26 'General' plans
27-28 Record and design plan dated 7 June 1810 and copy
29 Ground floor plan, more or less as executed
30-45 Sections and part-section
30-37 N end of site
38-42 Under the museum
43-45 Under the anatomy theatre
46-63 Portugal Street
64-119 Lincoln's Inn Fields front with portico, [SM D3/13/9] dated 1808, [SM D5/8/10] dated 15 August 1811, [SM D5/8/19] and [SM D5/8/3] dated 10 April 1811 and [SM D5/4/25] and [SM D5/4/26] dated August 1811
78-119 Portico, [SM D5/9/14] dated 1 June 1812
120-186 Hunterian Museum, [SM D5/2/5] dated 5 December 1809
187-226 Anatomy theatre [SM D5/6/14] dated 2 July 1807 and [SM D5/9/6] dated 27 January 1809

ARRANGEMENT OF DRAWINGS
Dance and Lewis's buildings work was carried out in two phases. The contract running from October 1806 to August 1810 for Phase 1 consisted of the redevelopment of the yards, stables and outbuildings to the south of 41 and 42 Lincoln's Inn Fields and fronting Portugal Street into an anatomy theatre and the major part of the museum. The demarcation line was the back walls of No.41 (an existing bow-fronted addition built on the west side remaining) and No.42 (see drawings [SM D5/1/17], [SM D5/1/18] and [SM D5/2/3]) on a line with the back wall of No.41, which projected further southwards than No.42. The contract for the northern part fronting Lincoln's Inn Fields ran from August 1810 to to November 1813 and included the repair and remodelling of the existing two houses as well as the completion of the museum and the addition of a portico. However, survey drawings and design plans and sections for the whole of the building were made from the start since the site levels, services, circulation and structure of the entire building had to be determined early on. Very few of the large number of surviving drawings (226) are dated and a broad arrangement has been made as shown above. Within each of these sections, drawings are arranged, as far as possible, in a chronological sequence.

For some drawings to a similar (and fairly unusual) scale that are probably related, see the catalogue note following [SM D5/3/19].

Visual evidence before demolition in 1834
There is little in the way of visual evidence, other than Dance and Lewis's drawings, for the Royal College of Surgeons constructed from 1806 to 1813 and rebuilt by Sir Charles Barry, 1835-7. External graphic documentation includes: a perspective of the front to Portugal Street, made for Soane's Royal Academy Lecture IV ([SM 18/7/17], reproduced in Watkin, 1996, fig.103); another, unused lecture drawing to a larger scale of the elevation of the upper part of the Portugal Street facade ([SM 18/7/16]); Cockerell's four small sketch drawings - plan, section and view of the ceiling of the Hunterian Museum and plan of anatomy theatre - bound into his diary for 29 May 1823 (RIBA MSS Collection CoC/9/4); three plans made by Soane as honorary architect, 1831 ([SM 66/4/1-3]); George Scharf's views from the southeast and northeast, 1834 (Royal College of Surgeons 300,301); William Cliff's sketch of the interior of the museum, before 1834 (RCS 317); and Richard Owen's sketch of the interior of the museum, between 1827 and 1834 (RCS 316).

LITERATURE. D. Watkin, Sir John Soane: Enlightenment thought and the Royal Academy lectures, Cambridge, 1996.

Building Committee
The original Surgeons' Hall in Old Bailey was designed by William Jones, 1747-51, and demolished in 1803. Unasked (or at any rate, not formally), George Dance the Elder designed a dozen schemes for the same building for which there are 39 drawings in the Soane Museum. The Hall in Old Bailey was vacated by the Surgeons when they moved to 41 Lincoln's Inn Fields, holding the first Court meeting there on 5 January 1797. A Building Committee was set up in December 1799 (RCS Archive, Minute Book) and at a meeting of 9 July 1800 it was 'Resolved that the Master be desired to confer with / Mr Dance, Mr Lewis and Mr Neale [sic] upon the subject / of the alterations and erections necessary to be made / ... and also to obtain from each of the Gentlemen a general plan for the same'. Presumably the architects asked for a schedule of accommodation and a report of the Building Committee, 2 October 1800, lists what was required including a theatre for not less than 300 people and a museum. At a meeting of 27 March 1801, the Committee examined the architects' plans and stated that those 'marked A and / B are in their opinion the most fit and proper to be adopted'.

There are a number of drawings by Dance, Lewis and Neill in the Royal College of Surgeons Library. Of the earliest designs for a new building on the site of a single house (41 Lincoln's Inn Fields) an elevation of the back front marked 'B' can be attributed to Neill along with nine other drawings in the same hand. Mr Neill is mentioned in the Building Committee Minutes (22 January 1802) as being requested to make a survey plan of the 'present Premises in order to ascertain / how far they will afford a proper Receptacle for / the Museum with a Theatre for Lectures' which he duly delivered during the following month. It is likely that Neill was primarily a surveyor and in that role had made a survey plan of the Surgeons' old premises in Old Bailey signed 'J. Neill Decem^r 1790' (CLRO, Surveyor's Justice Plans, No.1308, cited by G.C.R. Morris, 1984, p.97). His report and survey led to a decision to sell the lease of the Old Hall in 1796 and it was natural that he should submit designs for a new building. His alternative designs for the Surgeons, in an over-ambitious French Neo-Classical style, might have appealed to the Committee but would have raised eyebrows with Dance and Lewis. They may have made him feel rather de trop for when asked for further designs he subsequently excused himself on the grounds of 'being absent from / London on Public Business' (Minute Book, 12 January 1804) and 'in the Country' (Minute Book, 6 February 1804) and his name disappears from the Building Committee Minutes thereafter.

The initial designs by the three architects (of which only Neill's survives) were based on the demolition and rebuilding of 41 Lincoln's Inn Fields. However, this did not provide sufficient space for John Hunter's 13,682 anatomical specimens accepted by the College in December 1799. The College received its royal charter in 1800. From June 1801, the Building Committee discussed the purchase of Mr Jenner's house at 42 Lincoln's Inn Fields and this was finalised in 1803. The site now consisted of two adjacent houses with courts and stables behind, the ground sloping nearly 4 feet from the front to the back (as shown on drawing [SM D5/2/22]. Under different ownership and rebuilt at different dates, the houses varied in many ways and, importantly, in the different heights between adjacent floors either side of the party wall.

On 23 July 1803, the architects were 'requested to look over Mr Hunters and / to Examine the two Houses and the Ground belonging / to the College' and on 12 January 1804, the Committee received plans from Dance and Lewis and consequently proposed that the building in Portugal Street (to house the museum and anatomy theatre) be erected first and the rest completed at a future time. The architects were asked 'to / give Directions for making a plain model in wood / of the whole of their plan in order that the same may / remain a memorial of the Design in all its parts to be / executed whenever the circumstances of the College will admit' and this was done two years later (Minute Book, 8 April 1806). Further plans were made and examined on 6 February and yet more on 16 August 1804. On 5 January 1805, Dance 'presented a Design / from himself and Mr Lewis altered in consequence / of the suggestions of the Committee and minutely / explained the same. / The Committee after full consideration of / such Design and comparing it with former plan / and propositions are unanimously of opinion / that the plan now presented is best adapted to / all views and purposes of the College'. Next, the Committee required a 'design for a Front' and a 'Drawing of an uniform Elevation' with an estimate for the 'Shell of the whole Plan with its roof' and a second estimate for the 'back Front and / all the Walls and roof of the Theatre a part of / the whole Plan' (Minute Book, 20 April 1805). The drawings and estimates were delivered with a letter recommending that the north front should be entirely pulled down (Minute Book, 6 July 1805) and the recommendation was repeated several years later viz. 'a new Brick Front ... covered / with Stucco, in preference to a facing of Stone' (Minute Book, 21 March, 1811).

By 1806, it was apparent that the College's funds were insufficient for the undertaking, the architects estimating the whole cost of the museum and anatomy theatre at £15,000 (Minute Book, 8 April 1806). A Parliamentary grant of that sum was asked for and agreed on 4 July 1806.

Building work
From 25 August 1806, estimates, contracts, articles of agreement and correspondence relating to the first and second contracts were recorded in the Building Committee Minute Book. The Committee required bids from three or more 'artificers' and though these were sought from men known to Dance and Lewis even, say Dance's favourite stuccoist - Francis Bernasconi - had to compete along with the others. A Clerk of Works, James Worn, was employed from 2 May 1806 and must have dealt with the preparations for the auctioning and demolition of the stables, wash-house, servants privy, cistern and the rest that comprised the back parts of Portugal Street and that had to be cleared before the foundations were laid.

Building work did not always go smoothly. Delays were caused by 'the Frost having continued unusually late' (Minute Book, 17 April 1807) and the contract for timber was 'delayed on account of the uncommonly high price of the Material' (Minute Book, 20 May 1807) - a result of the Napoleonic Wars. Farington noted in his diary (19 August 1807) that the day before Dance 'went to Lincoln's Inn Fields to inspect the New Surgeons Hall, and while standing in the Sun, amid the reflection from the Bricks &c. Found Himself seized with a Headache & sickness. He took a Coach & went home & to bed' where the apothecary dosed him and 'recommended to Him not to apply to drawing today ...'. The unexpectedly ruinous state of the back wall of 42 Lincoln's Inn Fields held up the digging of the museum's foundations and the careful demolition and rebuilding of that wall became necessary (Minute Book, 11 September 1809). The apprehension of a man caught stealing 60 pounds of lead meant seven years' transportation for him and a reward for the vigilant caretaker (Minute Book, 15 November 1811).

The Minute Book recorded on 12 April 1810 a further grant of £10,000 from Parliament 'to complete the Building, but that it had / been intimated that the Parliament & the Public would expect in / consequence of such very liberal aid that an appropriate Front / should be added to the Building & that Parliament would / probably to induced to make some addition to the £10,000 / if the College would engage to make a Uniform Front' which Dance and Lewis considered would cost £6,000 or £7,000. On 7 June 1810, they produced 'a plan of a Front' which was approved and signed by the Chairman and the Parliamentary grant was increased to £12,500. Alterations and repairs to the two houses themselves included a new roof over the front part of the buildings, a new party wall and a chimney stack to No.41, staircase, partitions and repairs, all estimated at £5,074 (Minute Book, 18 March 1811).

The contractors
An account ledger (RCS Archive) dated October 1806 to August 1810 (first contract) and August 1810 to November 1813 (second contract) gives the costs and contractors. The first contract amounted to £24,540.5.3 and the second to £22,230.10.8¾, a grand total of £46,770.15.11¾. In the first contract the builders included: Bricklayer - John & Henry Lee; Carpenter - Robert Wright; Mason - Robert Spiller; Plasterer - Francis Bernasconi; Smith - John Woodall; Painting & Glazing - John Christmas; Warming flues - Harrison & Stewart. In the second contract the builders included: Bricklayer - John & Henry Lee, and William Tarlton; Carpenter - Robert Wright, and Carter & Co.; Mason - Robert Spiller; Plasterer - Francis Bernasconi; Slater - Thomas Brady; Smith - John Woodall; Plumber - William Good; Painter & Glazier - John Christmas; Sculptor - Charles Rossi; Paviors - Depree & Son.

Paying the architects
There is nothing recorded in the Building Committee Minutes about the joint terms of employment of the architects nor reference to any consideration of payment to them until 1 December 1808. This was for a small sum for survey work and a larger one for the reimbursement of two and a half years' wages paid by them on behalf of the College to James Worm, the Clerk of Works. For two items - drawing of designs and 18 attendances at committee meetings including those at the House of Commons, from December 1803 to May 1808 - no figures were written in. At the next Building Committee (2 January 1809) there was concern about what was owed to Dance and Lewis on the items listed but not priced. It hardly seems possible that these professional men were under the illusion that Dance and Lewis were doing the work for nothing but the evidence suggests that this was indeed the case. However, nothing was done until more than five years later when on 5 April 1814 it was 'Resolved / That the Secretary do write to the Architects / requesting to be informed of the Amount of the / Consideration which will be required from the College / for their valuable services.' Dance and Lewis replied that 'We have always charged and received the usual / and established Commission of 5 per cent upon the / expenditure of every Building which we have individually / designed and of which we have directed and superintended / the execution. / After stating this Fact we are at a loss in / replying to your Letter as it is perfectly new for us to be / jointly employed and therefore wish to decline mentioning / the amount of an Consideration as required by us, but / we shall be perfectly satisfied with whatever Remuneration / you may think we deserve for our Labours.' At the meeting of 4 July, it was 'Resolved / That they be paid Five Pounds per cent / on the Amount of the Expenditure'. However an account for £240.11s from Dance and Lewis for measuring work done by Mr Booth was queried and reference made to the minutes of 21 March 1811 where the architects had said that measuring would not be an extra. Dance's angry reply (the letter is signed by him alone) was read to the Committee on 4 October and pointed out that 'we made no charge on / Demand of the Expence of measuring the Works, but / have submitted the measurers bills to shew the expense / we are bound to pay. / I trust it will not be deemed improper further / for me to observe that after having conducted this / important Work during a Period of Eight Years to its / completion, we shall not in our separate capacities receive more than one half of that remuneration / which every Architect is universally allowed, and which in our separate exercise of the Profession / we have without Exception received for our Labours.' The Committee 'Resolved / That the Secretary wait upon Mr Dance / and request that he will furnish this Committee, with / the Amount of the Remuneration due to himself and / Mr Lewis, as Architects upon the Terms of the Resolution / of the Joint Meeting on the 4th Day of July last'. In other words Dance was to state the final cost of the building works and his hint about the architects each receiving 5 per cent was ignored.

The bill to 'The Royal College of Surgeons / D^r to George Dance J^s Lewis / 1806 to 1814 / To designing, superintending, and directing, all the / Buildings of the Royal College of Surgeons, Viz / The Museum, Theatre, Front Buildings and the Portico, / in Lincoln's Inn Fields, including all the numerous / Drawings of the Details necessary for the execution / of the Works, for the Measurement, examination, / and Certification, of the Artificers Bills, and for all / attendances on Committee / Five per Cent on the Sum of £46770 / being the Amount of the Artificers Bills / £2338:10:' was examined and agreed on 30 December 1814 and the Building Committee was then wound up.

Lewis's design role
Colvin characterises James Lewis (c.1751-1820) as an 'elegant neo-classical architect whose best works were country houses such as Bletchington, Eydon, Hackthorn and Lavington. These are neo-classical versions of the Palladian villas with interiors created in a restrained style of Adamsian character'. He was also architect to the Bridewell and Bethleham Hospitals. Lewis's joint employment with Dance by the Royal College of Surgeons was accidental. The invitation to three architects in 1800 should have led to one of them being selected but the need for a larger site, negotiation to purchase, clarifying the brief and design, and fund-raising took six years. During this time, Neill had early dropped out (or been frozen out by Dance and Lewis) and the two friends together attended meetings and signed official drawings. Lewis's contribution can be inferred from drawings and the executed work. Nevertheless, almost all of the surviving drawings are by Dance and in his collection, and he certainly assumed the major share of the design work which fits 'naturally into the scheme of his own development' (Kalman p.215).

Of 11 drawings signed by Dance or Lewis or by both (only two of which are dated) at the Royal College of Surgeons, an early plan drawn by Lewis shows the essentials of the final design that kept the two existing houses and, behind them, built a museum and anatomy theatre (RCS 66/3/13). A succeeding plan ([SM D5/3/23]) marked 'Approved' and dated 5 January 1805 follows the same disposition of parts and though later plans in Dance's hand are more integrated and more thoroughly worked out, the responsibility for the general plan can be attributed to Lewis. Evidence for Lewis's involvement in the design of the principal front is shown in four related drawings: three variant elevations at the Soane Museum ([SM D5/7/3], [SM D5/7/2], [SM D5/7/1] and [SM D5/7/1B]) and another at the College (no reference number, dated 9 June 1810) are in his hand. Though the preliminary, alternative designs including those with a portico [SM D3/14/27] were by Dance. Lewis seems to have contributed some elements including the parapet over the portico.

Although all of the surviving drawings for the Portugal Street elevation of the Surgeons' building are in Dance's hands as well as in his collection, Lewis should not be excluded as a contributor. Kalman (p.222) wrote that 'Smirke and Soane, who were in a position to know, call the design a collaborative effort. Comparisons support this assertion. The syncopated composition resembles Dance's unexecuted facade for the Earl of Bristol [6 St James's Square, London, c.1816] while the central niche, end windows, and two-tiered rhythms may be compared to Lewis's project for a theater at Limerick' (published in his Original designs ..., 1779-80, II, plate XXIII. On the other hand, this back elevation may have its source in a Soane design published in Plans, elevations & sections of buildings executed in Norfolk ..., 1788. Plate 40 is one of two alternative (unexecuted) designs for a villa for Wilbraham 'Tollemache at Mottram in Cheshire and has a two-storey central niche in which is set the front door. Again, would it be fanciful to relate this back front to such Indian buildings as the Gate of Victory at the Mosque in Fatehpur Sikri with its central arch, painted by William Hodges and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1794?

Portugal Street front
The design of the south front facing on to Portugal Street, though it was the back elevation, gave far more scope than remodelling the existing, domestically scaled north facade to Lincoln's Inn Fields. A first elevation ([SM D5/7/18]) has the essentials of the executed design but, with a pediment and tablet raised above the blocking course and austerely detailed, is a better composition. The detailing of the capital and entablature of the first design of this first design is even more minimal than in the executed design on which Soane, in his Royal Academy Lecture IV, commented that the 'suppression/omission of the upper mouldings of the cornice ... is so directly at variance with every principle of Grecian architecture that it would be in vain to look for a precedent in the work of the correct Greeks' (quoted in Watkin, 1996, p.94). Watkin (p.94, n.124) added that in a later lecture at the Royal Institution, 'Soane noted that the first architect to omit the upper cornice moulding in a pediment was Inigo Jones at Amesbury Abbey (now known to be the work of John Webb), from whom the technique passed to Dance ...'.

The Lincoln's Inn Fields front
While the free treatment of the back of the Surgeon's building that combined the linearity of Greek architecture with Roman arches can be seen not, as Soane implies, as ignorant but rather as an expression of 'unfettered' architecture, the design of the front elevation across Lincoln's Inn Fields from Soane's own house was more problematic. Though the facade was rebuilt with different windows and a stucco finish, the rooms behind remained so nothing drastic could be done. Parliament's request for an 'appropriate Front' suggests that the homely character of two terrace houses with two front doors was found wanting and to Dance and Lewis a portico seemed the answer. This had been anticipated in an early plan ([SM D5/1/15]) dateable to the summer of 1806, which shows a portico. It was an entrance used only by 'those on the Courts of Examiners and Assistants; members ... [having] to use the back door to Portugal Street, an affront that rankled for years' (Blandy & Lumley, 2000, p.19). As a social space between the street and the two entrance halls it must have worked well as, in a somewhat different form, it does today. And certainly a portico with a weighty entablature and a 4 foot high parapet (which Soane called a blocking course) that was almost three storeys high signaled a public building and distinguished it from its domestic neighbours. It is generally considered to be the first pure Greek portico (impedimented and using a Greek order but with an unfluted column which is not strictly correct) to be erected in London (J. Summerson, 1963, p.274).

In his Royal Academy Lecture IV, Soane, referring to the six slender Ionic columns and the entablature of the portico, condemned this 'clumsy imitation of the light Grecian anta with an entablature fitted for the massy columns of the early Doric placed over them'. He also disliked the use of 'that strange addition to the cornice vulgarly called the blocking course' (quoted in Watkin, 1996, p.941). Soane's criticism of the impropriety of aspects of the Surgeons' building was actually part of an attack on Robert Smirke's Covent Garden Theatre, 1808-09, and was to continue the coolness between Dance and himself. Whatever Soane's arguments about 'first principles' and the observation of 'precedent in the work of the correct Greeks', it has to be admitted that the north front of the Royal College of Surgeons was an aesthetic failure.

Dance had in his library a copy of J. Gondoin, Description des Ecoles de Chirurgie, Paris (1780). Its 30 large engraved plates illustrate the magnificent College of Surgery (now College of Medicine) whose palatial accommodation included a coffered anatomy theatre for 1,400 students. With a restricted site and slim budget, there was little that Dance could emulate. He did though, like Gondoin, have a portico with six unfluted Greek Ionic columns though Gondoin's was prefaced by a cour d'honneur with 70 more such columns.

The anatomy theatre
The 'approved' general plan with sections [SM D5/3/23] signed by Dance and Lewis on 5 January 1805 shows the anatomy theatre with an almost square (30 by 34 feet) plan. The next drawing has a better arrangement with curved walls near the demonstration area but the students in row 13 at the back would have had a poor view. The intermediate design of a few months later has an oval plan that Dance was to refine in subsequent drawings. The anatomy theatre in the earlier Surgeons' Hall designed by William Jones, 1747-51, was octagonal as the result of a decision made by the new Company not to have the oval plan of Inigo Jones's anatomy theatre built for the older Barber-Surgeons Company, 1636-7. The younger Dance had his father's unexecuted designs for the Surgeons' Hall carried out by William Jones and may well have examined the alternative circular, oval and semicircular plans that were proposed as well as the disposition of dissection and other rooms, and circulation.

The Hunterian Museum
The collection of anatomical specimens collected by John Hunter FRS (1728-93), surgeon-anatomist and the founder of scientific surgery, was purchased by the government and entrusted to the College of Surgeons in 1799. In return the College agreed that the collection would be catalogued and opened to the public and that an annual series of lectures would be established. The plan and general section of the museum were soon resolved. An apse at each end and three bays, each with a half-dome and lantern, gave a space about 100 feet long by 37 feet wide running north/south of the whole site with a separate entrance on the principal front and a subsidiary entrance in Portugal Street. Below the museum and associated with the anatomy theatre were preparation and store rooms. The precedents for museums of anatomy and natural history were few. Glazed vertical and sloped cases with specimens, often with detailed labels, that needed close examination by medical students and others meant that good natural lighting was particularly important. The hastily built, earlier Hunterian Museum in Leicester Fields, 52 by 28 feet, was top-lit and had a gallery all round. The Leverian Museum, moved in 1787 from Leicester House on the north side of Leicester Square to purpose-built premises at the corner of Blackfriars Road and Albion Street had, besides a dozen rooms, a top-lit rotunda with a gallery. Unexecuted schemes for museums of natural history included Soane's for Cambridge University, 1791 (SM 71/3/13), which had three coffer-domed bays each lit by an oval lantern and apsidal ends. Dance's museum had a gallery and thus the proportions differed from Soane's but there is an affinity.

Dance's quite radical solution for supporting the gallery in the Hunterian Museum was the use of 6 foot, cast-iron cantilevers and he also drew but did not use iron butterfly cantilevered beams ([SM D5/3/37] and [SM D5/3/18]). For the top-lighting of the museum, Dance tried out on paper a variety of solutions including: circular, elliptical or octagonal lanterns ([SM D5/1/13]); circular and semicircular lanterns ([SM D5/1/10]); clerestory lighting ([SM D5/3/27] verso); a single continuous lantern ([SM D5/3/2]); and for the anatomy theatre, an iron patent glazing system ([SM D5/9/3]) of the same form as the existing lantern over the staircase of 14 Lincoln's Inn Fields (Sir John Soane Museum). The top-lighting adopted for the museum consisted of three circular lanterns.

Despite its early demolition, Dance and Lewis's museum was not a failure. Under active curators, particularly Richard Owen who succeeded Richard Cliff in 1827, the contents (whose nature widened beyond medical research into the acquisition of the skeletons of both current and extinct animals) outgrew the space and by 1833 only half of the specimens could be displayed.

Comments by Cockerell
C. R. Cockerell visited the Royal College of Surgeons on or soon after 29 May 1823. In his diary he made a sketch plan, section and view of the museum, and a plan of the theatre and wrote: 'College of Surgeons, the Ionic portico the gravest I have seen & most severe / ill applied to the thin paper front of a Ho: with which it has no connection / neither by ornamental arch^l style solidity character^{^lines} or material. Very ill / pediment, vestibule & interior in no kind of harmony or correspondence, / you begin with Greek & as far as example leads you all is well but the mom^t / there is of your own it is trash. What is now most essential is to / appropriate the Greek style & graft it on our wants & recast it for our / necessities, the Italian arch^ts did this particularly Palladio. / Hunterian Museum abo: 110 by 40 / well contrived for depositing great no: / of specimens & well lighted, the / contrivance well conceived for its / area, particularly its gallery / & lower recesses - but the taste is that of a carpenter, the intersection of the domed coves & segments are here / producing most unpleasant unarchitectural effect, the most unstable / & unsubstantial thing possible, as unlike the Portico / as can be conceived, the eyes formed by / the intersection of the segments & domes / distressing - same defects in Ld / Lansdowne Ho: / the front line in face of front of gallery C. which has too / much breadth of light generally was most judeceously broken / by small breaks forward in railing which had charming effect / & besides is served to place objects on top of them. / Museum kept in great order, the Theatre near is an elypsis of the / worst form & the rusticated lines of worst effect, but the form is not / ill adapted to the purpose, the horrible things & monsters preserved turned my stomach. I think it cannot be / doubted Callot must have passed much time in such museums to find out that rich assemblage of disgusting figures, there is a cast from a / black man in life very good the most perfect stature - it was Hunter's intention / to have cast all the different tribes of the human figures. Vast expense pain / & trouble prevented it' (RIBA MSS Collection, Diary 29 May 1823, CoC/9/4).

Later history
The building was officially opened on 13 May 1813 and closed on 9 April 1834. From 1824 Soane had been honorary architect to the Royal College of Surgeons (Soane, 1835, p.59) and in 1831, three plans of the College were made (SM 66/4/1-3). These are a general plan, a plan of the first floor at the north end and a plan (dated 5 July 1831) of the museum. Included in two of the three drawings is a narrow house (26 feet wide) belonging to Mr Pollock. This was 40 Lincoln's Inn Fields on the east side and soon to be acquired by the Surgeons. In August Soane borrowed several of the Dance and Lewis drawings at the College (inscribed on verso of RCS 66/3/18 'August 1831 / Mr Soane had 7 plans / No.1'). This was in connection with an unofficial request from Robert Keate to look at the museum and see if altering the roof and adding another gallery would improve it (SM Priv.Corr. I.K.1.20), dated 30 June 1831). Asked to make a structural survey, Soane responded with a letter calling attention to the poor state of the room over the first floor library and to some of the roof timbers over the back attic (SM Priv.Corr. XV.J.15, dated 25 February 1833).

These were minor matters though and it was the additions to Hunter's collection and the resulting shortage of space that decided the Surgeons on having an entirely new building. Soane knew nothing of this until he received a circular from the 'Royal College of Surgeons in London / 23rd October, 1833 / Sir / ... to acquaint you that, if you shall / desire to compete for the superintendence and / execution of the alterations in the Building / necessary for carrying the said object of the / College into effect, the Committee will / be happy to receive any Plan or Plans for that / purpose from you...'.

Interested architects were required to submit plans, general specification and estimate by the 30th of the next month. Soane pointed out that 'After having held this honourable appointment / nearly 10 years and having on all occasions / when required given my professional advice / and assistance gratuitously I was not a little surprised to receive a short time / since a communication from the College (apparently a Circular)'. No answer came from the Surgeons.

Soane did not compete, nor did Robert Smirke but Charles Barry, Decimus Burton, J. Gandy Deering, W. E. Kendall and William Walker did. Barry won the competition. His estimated cost was £16,439 which, considering that the total cost of the earlier building was £46,770, seems over-optimistic. Indeed it was, since the final cost was over £45,000. Barry demolished almost all of the original buildings except for the walls of the museum, and the portico. To keep the portico in the centre of Barry's building, the westernmost of Dance's columns were re-erected at the east end. The shafts of the order were fluted. Barry's building was opened in February 1837, the triple height museum having two galleries with top-lighting from a continuous glazed cove. The contents continued to grow and Barry added more rooms in 1855. Further additions by Stephen Salter on either side and above Barry's building were completed in 1891. Bombing on the night of 10-11 May 1941 reduced the museum's collections by more than two-thirds but Barry's building with Salter's top-heavy additions was restored, along with Dance's re-styled portico.

LITERATURE. J. Soane, Memoirs of the professional life of an architect, 1835; Z. Cope, The History of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, London, 1959; J. Dobson, 'The Architectural history of the Hunterian Museum', Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, XXIX, 1961, pp.113 -26; A. Oswald, 'The Royal College of Surgeons of England', Country Life, CXXX, 1961, pp.134-7 J. Summerson, Architecture in Britain 1530 to 1830, 4th ed., 1963; G. C. R. Morris, 'Surgeons' Hall, Old Bailey, designed by William Jones', Transactions of the London and Middlesex Architectural Society, XXXV, 1984, pp.91-99; C. Yanni, Nature's museums: Victorian science and the architecture of display, 1999, pp.46-51; J. P. Blandy & J. S. P. Lumley, eds, The Royal College of Surgeons of England, 2000, passim.

OTHER SOURCES. Royal College of Surgeons of England Archive (including Building Committee Minute Book, Account Ledger, and some drawings); RIBA MSS Collection (C. R. Cockerell's diary, 1823)

Group

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