½ in to 1 ft and full size

as above and labelled Girder, Stone, Line of present Floor and Line of Ceiling, some dimensions given and (verso, Dance) Section of Portico and / Hall of Entrance / Stratton

• 1803-07

Brown pen, light red and sepia washes, pencil on laid paper (660 x 845)

Dance

D & C Blauw IV and D&CBxX in cartouche surmounted by fleur-de-lis

Pilasters have been erased from the drawing. The unfinished section of portico and hall serves to illustrate the difficulty of making a principal entrance in the reduced height of a storey below a piano nobile. It means that for instance, Dance's front door is 2½ feet lower than the windows above it. Sanderson, of course had two entrances on the principal elevation: a giant portico with stairs rising to a cube room of 33 feet on the piano nobile and underneath, at ground level, another front door that must in fact have been the one most used. On the garden side there were five steps and a perron entrance to the piano nobile and, internally, two off-centre stairs and a servants' stair. By the time Dance appeared on the scene, the external entrances had gone. Using the remaining stair on the south side and the 21.0 by 20.6 room next to it, Dance gained a space 31 feet 6½ inches wide and 20 feet 6 inches deep. And by removing the floor between ground and first floor he achieved a height of 27 feet 7¾ inches (marked on [SM D1/2/16]. However, the gallery on the piano nobile that he had created was only 11 feet 1 inch above the ground floor. Dance's solution with five runs of steps was unconventional but very successful.

Drawing

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