[29] Finished drawing for the principal elevation of a group of prison buildings for Edinburgh Bridewell, 1791, executed in part

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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)
    - Variant design for a castle-style bridewell scheme, 1791, executed in part (6)

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Reference number

SM Adam volume 33/28

Purpose

[29] Finished drawing for the principal elevation of a group of prison buildings for Edinburgh Bridewell, 1791, executed in part

Aspect

Principal elevation of a group of prison buildings comprising a governor’s house in the foreground, the main prison block behind and flanking blocks to the sides containing a gaol for felons and a bedlam, all connected by single-storey walls. The governor’s house is three storeys and five bays wide, over a half-sunk basement, with a hipped roof and a perron staircase to the principal floor. The main prison building is four storeys and sixteen bays wide, over a half-sunk basement, with protruding gabled ends. The flanking blocks are two storeys and five bays wide with two-bay corner turrets with conical roofs, all over a half-sunk basement. Across the entire elevation there are a mixture of windows in recessed arches, as well as slit, square, rectangular, and arched windows. Other adornments include string-coursing, machicolated cornices, crenelations, hood mouldings, and bartizans

Scale

bar scale of 3/8 of an inch to 10 feet

Inscribed

North front of a new Design of a Bridewell for the County & City of Edinburgh Shewing the Elevation of the House for the / Governour[sic] & Governess, for the Chaplain & Surgeon. Also two wing buildings, One of which is proposed for a Goal[sic] for Felons &ca, and / the other as a Bedlam for Lunaticks[sic] &c^a. – with some dimensions

Signed and dated

1791
Robert Adam Architect 1791.

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil, wash and pink coloured wash on laid paper within a ruled border (487x288)

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. 1, 2001, pp. 56-7
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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