[21] Finished drawing for the section 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 33/13

Purpose

[21] Finished drawing for the section of a group of prison buildings for Edinburgh Bridewell, 1791, unexecuted

Aspect

Longitudinal section of a prison building showing a central five-storey building with two-storey links connecting to three-storey blocks. In the centre is an inspector’s lodge with a mixture of square headed windows and small narrow apertures on different floors. At the base is a pulpit with flanking, balustraded steps. Either side of the tower are staircases leading to each floor, visible through three sets of arched openings with railings, with cisterns of water in the attics. The two outer blocks comprise a narrow stairwell and an inspector’s lodge with small narrow apertures, followed by openings to the individual cells with railings. The different colour washes denote the building materials

Scale

bar scale of 1 1/2 inches to 10 feet

Inscribed

Section of the Bridewell from East to West showing the Front of the Lodges for the invisible Inspection at Edinburgh

Signed and dated

1790-91
datable to 1790-91

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil, wash and coloured wash including lemon yellow and pink within a ruled border on laid paper (1206x477)

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.

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