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  • image SM D2/8/17
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Reference number

SM D2/8/17

Purpose

Lowther Castle, Westmorland, 1803

Aspect

[2] Plan, 3 faint part-plans and faint half-front elevation

Scale

(plan) 1/24 in to 1 ft approximately and (elevation) 1/20 in to 1 ft

Inscribed

rooms labelled, dimensions given and key with list of rooms and their dimensions: A Gothic Hall - 20 x 30 / B Dining room - 24 x 48 / C Breakfast Rm - 18 x 24 / D Drawing Rm 24 x 36 / E Library - 24 x 40 / F continued - [tower extension to the library] 16 x 16 / G Gothic Passages - 7 x 110 / H Principal Stair 17 Diamr / I Back Stair - 9 x 15 / Offices / L Butler / M Bed[room] / N Plate [together] 24 x 24 / O Servants Hall 18 x 30 / P Servants Entrance / Q Housekeeper / R Stillroom &c [together] 18 x 30 / S Kitchen - 22 x 30 / T Brewhouse / W Cover'd way

Signed and dated

  • 1803

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pink wash, pencil on laid paper (480 x 675)

Hand

Dance

Watermark

D & C Blauw and fleur-de-lis in crowned cartouche and WR below

Notes

The design is quadrangular with a new? east wing of about 192 feet and a shorter new? south wing set around a courtyard with Laundry Bakehouse Kitchen Offices &c to the north?, Steward / Justice [room] Chapel to the west? and Family private / Apartments to the south-west? These last two wings with the family apartments may be existing or else were left to be fully worked out by Dance. Kalman did not associate this plan with Lowther. His account (pp.179-81) is for an 'unidentified scheme' and discusses the dimensions of the rooms with their ratios and musical equivalents. However, the huge size of the project and its style suggest that this is one of Dance's schemes for Lowther Castle.

Of the three faint pencil plans, two seem to be revisions of the south? wing and, of the south wing and part of the east? wing. The other part-plan is related to the half-elevation that shows a three-storey building with (from the left) nine bays divided into three parts of three bays each by turrets; a narrower taller bay flanked by turrets; and an arched opening in the centre. This faintly drawn elevation does not relate to the more fully drawn out courtyard plan but is to the same scale and has a correspondence to the elevation shown on [SM D2/8/14] which might be evidence of the more fully drawn-out courtyard plan being associated with Lowther.

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.


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