[5] Finished drawing for the south front of a group of prison buildings for Edinburgh Bridewell, 1791, unexecuted

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Robert and James Adam office drawings
- Public buildings
  - Bridewell, Edinburgh: designs for a group of prison buildings, 1790-91, executed in part (32)
    - Designs for a classical-style bridewell scheme, 1790-91, unexecuted (9)

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Reference number

SM Adam volume 33/11

Purpose

[5] Finished drawing for the south front of a group of prison buildings for Edinburgh Bridewell, 1791, unexecuted

Aspect

Rear (south) elevation of a group of prison buildings within a hilly landscape. The buildings comprise a two-storey, five-bay central block, behind a single-storey parapet wall that terminates in two-storey, single-bay pavilions. Behind the wall, pavilions and central block are two, two-storey buildings with connecting single-bay pavilions. The central block has a bow end with a conical roof and is decorated with string-coursing and a dentilled cornice. Across the entire elevation are a mixture of square, arched, Diocletian and Venetian windows

Scale

to a scale

Inscribed

South front towards the Cannongate[sic] of the New Bridewell proposed to be built upon the Caltoun[sic] Hill at Edinburgh / (in a curator's hand) See Vol 21. 7 / original SA / 2 / (verso) 3 Plans 2 Sections 4 Elevations of the Bridewell at Edin^h / 1^st Design

Signed and dated

1790-91
datable to 1790-91

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil and coloured wash including cerulean blue, sepia, olive green, Payne’s grey, black, Venetian red and Naples yellow within a ruled border on laid paper (566x283)

Hand

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

Watermark

Portal & Bridges

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.

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