[18] Preliminary design for the rear elevation 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)
    - Design for a castle-style bridewell scheme, 1791, unexecuted (11)

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Reference number

SM Adam volume 1/26

Purpose

[18] Preliminary design for the rear elevation of a group of prison buildings for Edinburgh Bridewell, 1791, unexecuted

Aspect

Rear elevation of a prison building comprising a wide three-storey building with three gabled attic storeys to the rear, with flanking single-storey links terminating in two-storey, five-bay blocks, all over a half-sunk basement. The central building is curved in plan with a hipped roof. There are a mixture of windows in recessed arches, as well as slit, square, arched and tri-partite windows. Other adornments include string-coursing, machicolated cornices, heraldry and bartizans

Scale

to a scale

Signed and dated

1790-91
datable to 1790-91

Medium and dimensions

Pencil on laid paper (309x115)

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

Notes

The different storey heights in the outer gabled ends are repeated in the sections for this design, with one section showing a four-storey gabled end (SM Adam volume 33/16) and two others showing a five-storey gabled end (SM Adam volumes 33/13 & 33/14).

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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