Royal College of Surgeons, 41-42 (now 35-43) Lincoln's Inn Fields, Holborn, Camden, London, 1805-12 (with James Lewis)

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George Dance office drawings: the drawings of George Dance the Elder and George Dance the Younger
- Public buildings (3)
  - Royal College of Surgeons, 41-42 (now 35-43) Lincoln's Inn Fields, Holborn, Camden, London, 1805-12 (with James Lewis) (226). Survey drawings, preliminary designs, design and working drawings

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Reference number

SM D5/1/15

Purpose

Royal College of Surgeons, 41-42 (now 35-43) Lincoln's Inn Fields, Holborn, Camden, London, 1805-12 (with James Lewis)

Aspect

[6] Plan of ground floor with three-bay museum with N and S apses, an anatomy theatre that is oval with 12 rows of seats and alternative porticos, all drawn over a survey plan of the existing ground floor.

Scale

1/5 in to 1 ft

Inscribed

dimensions of portico given, 83.7 by the Scale betwixt the existing Walls (Portugal Street) and calculations of numbers of brackets for Gallery Verso Rough elevation of a building in a symmetrical Castle style with lantern tower behind an arched centre flanked by towers Pencil This is related to Dance's design for Lowther Castle and evidence of his continuing interest in its design, though by the summer of 1806 the young Robert Smirke had, with Dance's help, taken over the job.

Signed and dated

1805-12

Medium and dimensions

Black and red pen, sepia, light red, yellow, blue and pink washes, pencil, pricked for transfer on wove paper (945 x 565)

Hand

Dance, J. Neill (survey)

Watermark

James Whatman Turkey Mill Kent 1795

Notes

The courtyards and stables that were the sites for the museum and anatomy theatre are shown more clearly here than on the previous drawing.

Dance has almost reached the solution for the south end of his scheme. It is now much better integrated though he has still to refine the compass-drawn parts of anatomy theatre and museum and to introduce the external 'great niche' that resolves and expresses the junction of oval anatomy theatre and semicircular-ended museum on the Portugal Street elevation and is shown on subsequent drawings. Three circular and two semicircular skylights light the museum.

For the main front to Lincoln's Inn Fields, Dance (using light and dark sepia and blue and pink washes) tries differing solutions for relocating windows and doors and placing the six columns of the portico. The difficulties of reconciling the domestic scale of the two house fronts with a giant portico while allowing access to the basement is very evident.

See also [SM D5/1/8] for a similar design with low curved end walls to the portico.

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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