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  • image SM Adam volume 33/25
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Reference number

SM Adam volume 33/25

Purpose

[3] Finished drawing for the second floor of a group of prison buildings for Edinburgh Bridewell, 1790-91, unexecuted

Aspect

Second floor plan of a group of prison buildings comprising a central block, flanked by two courtyards enclosed on each side by work rooms, with an infirmary at one end and a bedlam at the other, and at the top by a D-shaped range of work rooms with a central corridor division (linking to a guardroom) to form two courts. There is a chapel at the bottom, flanked by a house for the surgeon and chaplain. Rooms include a kitchen, store rooms, nurses rooms, offices for the work mistresses, guards and head keeper

Scale

bar scale of 1/2 an inch to 10 feet

Inscribed

Second floor of the Bridewell / (and in the hand of William Adam) at Edinburgh / (in another hand) Nurses / room / Infirmary / Nurses room / Work Room / Work room / Work Room / Closet / Closet / Work Room / Closet / Work Room / Work Room / Work Room / Work Room / Closet / Keepers / Closet / Closet / Work Room / Work Room / Work Room / Work Room / Keeper / Keeper / Guard room / Messengers / Guard / Work Room / Work Room / Closet / Closet / Work / Mistress / Work / Mistress / Work Room / Work Room / Closet / Work Room / Work Room / Work Room / Work Room / Closet / Closet / Work Room / Nurses room / Bedlam / Nurses room / Closet / Work Room / Work Room / Work Room / Work Room / Storeroom / Kitchen / continued / Storeroom / Under Cook / Upper Cook / Store room / Head / Keeper / Head / Keeper / Work / Mistress / Work / Mistress / Chapel / Surgeon / Chaplain with some room dimensions / (verso) 8 / Bridewell / 1st Design

Signed and dated

  • 1790-91
    datable to 1790-91

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil and wash on laid paper (628x478)

Hand

possibly
Adam office hand, possibly Robert Morison, John Robertson, or John Paterson

Literature

Bolton, 1922, p. 11
King, Vol. 2, 2001, p. 54
For a full list of literature references see scheme notes.

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.

Browse (via the vertical menu to the left) and search results for Drawings include a mixture of Concise catalogue records – drawn from an outline list of the collection – and fuller records where drawings have been catalogued in more detail (an ongoing process).