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Ickworth House, Suffolk, 1803 (1). Survey by JF

Notes

After Soane' disappointment in failing to carry out the rebuilding of Ickworth for Frederick, Bishop of Derry and 4th Earl of Bristol, work was begun in 1795 under Francis Sandby's direction and to the design of Mario Asprucci. At the Earl Bishop's death on 8 July 1803 work was stopped and not resumed until about 1825.

The survey plan of the basement of Ickworth is dated 21 October 1803 and was probably asked for by Dance. Joseph Farington recorded in his diary (6 November 1803) that Dance was 'engaged by Lord Hawkesberry [Robert Banks Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool (1779-1828), Lord Hawkesbury until 1808] to go to Lord Bristols at Ickworth to inspect the state of the Building'. A rough perspective of Ickworth showing the portico, quadrant wings and pavilions (on the verso of a drawing for 33 Hill Street, London ([SM D3/5/10]) and a rough plan and elevation (verso of a drawing for Stratton Park, Hampshire ([SM D1/3/33]) were made by Dance. At the time of his visit, the shell of the rotunda was more or less complete though with a temporary roof, but the walls of the wings were hardly begun. Nothing seems to have resulted from Dance's visit except possibly a scheme tentatively identified with the Earl Bishop: see unexecuted variant designs for a monumental entrance to a park.

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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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Contents of Ickworth House, Suffolk, 1803 (1). Survey by JF