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  • image SM Adam volume 37/49

Reference number

SM Adam volume 37/49

Purpose

[2] Design for the principal floor of a castle, 1777, unexecuted

Aspect

Principal floor plan of a polygonal-shaped castle bound on one side by a continuous wall, with a semi-circular court at the central corner of the building with a series of niches, with a range to the front connecting to two other ranges. The central range has three principal rooms with an enfilade, and a gallery to the rear connecting to the principal rooms in the other ranges which have double-apsidal ends. There are a series of canted bay, octagonal, circular, and square towers to each range. Rooms include a drawing room, salon, dining room, gallery, ante room, breakfast room, bed chambers, dressing rooms, as well as rooms for the maids, housekeeper, valet, steward and butler. The pink wash denotes the existing fabric

Scale

bar scale of 5/8 of an inch to 10 feet

Inscribed

Plan of the Principal Story of Cardiff Castle / one of the Seats of the Right Honble Lord Mountstewart / Maids / room / Water / Closet / Powderg / room / Lady’s Dressing / room / Closet / Bed Chamber / Water / Closet / My Lords’ / Dressing room / 2d. Anti room / or Breakfast room / Valets room / Anti room / Buffet / drawing room / China Closet / Salon / Corridore & Gallery / Court / Dining room / Minia / ture / Pictures / Buffet / Anti room / Linnen / housekeepers room / Store room / Passages / Butlers room / Butlers Pantry / / Plate room / Stewards room with some room dimensions

Signed and dated

  • 22/5/1777
    Adelphi / 22 May 1777

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil and pink wash on laid paper (593x557)

Hand

Possibly
Adam office hand, possibly Joseph Bonomi

Literature

Bolton, 1922, p. 6
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.

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).