[1] Sketch design, 1781

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Public buildings
  - London: Battersea: unexecuted competition designs for a prison for 300 women and a prison for 600 men (with drawings by George Dance), 1781-1782 (13)

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Reference number

SM volume 42/39 recto and verso

Purpose

[1] Sketch design, 1781

Aspect

Rough plan showing a circular centre with twin, square courtyard blocks symmetrically disposed on three sides. Each block measures 191.6 by 182.0 and is labelled 34 Cells, 32 Cells and 34 Cells - 100 cells for each block with a total of 600 cells - presumably on two floors; (verso) rough circular plan with 15 rows (220 feet long) of 40 cells arranged radially in three groups of five and totalling 600 prisoners, two aerial perspectives of the same design, and an alternative plan

Inscribed

(recto) as above, dimensions given and some (pencil) calculations; (verso) calculations adjusting the layout to 20 (not 40) cells taking into account a width of 9 feet 6 inches per cell

Signed and dated

datable to 1781

Medium and dimensions

Brown pen on laid paper (201x 207, bottom right-hand corner missing)

Hand

George Dance (1741-1825)

Watermark

Notes

This rapidly made sketch design encapsulates the finished designs that followed. Thus the recto of this drawing is the basis of the plan for a women's prison (see SM 13/1/11) while the verso of SM 42/122 has the essence of the plan and elevation of the men's prison (see SM 13/1/16 and SM 13/1/20). The authorship of these drawings is important and has been attributed to George Dance.

For recto of SM 42/122 verso see (Soane's architectural education ...): Preliminary, early, intermediate and late designs, record drawings and R.A. exhibition drawings for a mausoleum for the Earl of Chatham died 11 May 1778: drawing 2 by Soane

Literature

P.du Prey, John Soane: the making of an architect, 1982, chapter 10, 'The Competition for the first Howardian penitentiaries'

Level

Drawing

Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation

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.

Browse (via the vertical menu to the left) and search results for Drawings include a mixture of Concise catalogue records – drawn from an outline list of the collection – and fuller records where drawings have been catalogued in more detail (an ongoing process).