[44] Variant design

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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: Royal Hospital, Chelsea for the Board of Commissioners, 1807-1835 (226)
    - Infirmary, August 1809 - November 1810, April - July 1818 and c.1833 (88)

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Reference number

SM 67/5/21

Purpose

[44] Variant design

Aspect

Variant elevation for part of the south front, a small rough detail for dentilated cornice and a part-plan marking window spacing

Scale

bar scale

Inscribed

some dimensions and calculations given

Hand

Soane office, Soane

Notes

This drawing shows a very similar elevation to SM 67/5/18. The third bay from the left is surmounted by a pedimented attic with three short arched windows (SM 67/5/18 shows the middle bay of the whole structure surmounted by a similar ornament). SM 67/5/20 shows a comparable arrangement, with no pedimented attic. Instead the middle portion is surmounted by a balustrade and pedestal (with illegible inscription) and the bays to the left are surmounted by four antefixae. Both show a rusticated basement - presumably providing exercise facilities for pensioners (as Soane noted in his report to the Board of Commissioners on 13 April 1809).

The elevations show what is presumably the 'foul ward' marked on SM 67/5/19. It can be seen on the end, set apart on the left for this drawing and SM 67/5/21 [44] - a single storey structure surmounted by a triangular pediment (with antifixae at the corners). It is connected to the main Infirmary by an arch only, in the belief that this would prevent infection spreading.

It seems likely that this design was intended to be built in the position indicated by the block plans of SM 67/5/19 and SM 67/5/18.

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).