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  • image SM Adam volume 33/21

Reference number

SM Adam volume 33/21

Purpose

[8] Finished drawing for the south elevation of a group of prison buildings for Edinburgh Bridewell, 1790-91, unexecuted

Aspect

Rear (south) elevation and part-section of a group of prison buildings comprising a central five-bay, two-storey block flanked by curved wings terminating in pavilions. The central block has a central corridor shown in section, bound by two curved walls. The first-floor is divided into three bays by pairs of Tuscan columns, flanked by single bays within recessed arches with gabled ends. The curved wings comprise a ground-floor arcaded loggia with continuous string coursing, and in the central bay of each wing is a pedimented opening, with ground-floor columns and first-floor balustraded Diocletian windows

Scale

bar scale of 1/2 an inch to 10 feet

Inscribed

Front of the circular Courts for the new Bridewell / (verso) Printed Plan of the Town & the new intended Bridew[sic]

Signed and dated

  • 1790-91
    datable to 1790-91

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil and wash on laid paper (194x450)

Hand

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

Watermark

GR surmounted by a fleur de lis within a crowned cartouche

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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