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  • image SM volume 74/48

Reference number

SM volume 74/48

Purpose

[21] Design for cellar and foundations, as executed

Aspect

Longitudinal Section on the Line C D to Plan of Office looking west

Scale

bar scale of 1/3 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

as above, a key A B E F G H I K L M N O P Q, dimensions given

Signed and dated

  • datable to 1792

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pale red ink, sepia, yellow ochre, brown madder and pale blue washes, partly pricked for transfer on wove paper with one fold mark (509 x 644)

Hand

attributed to William Lodder (assistant 1789-?) or Charles Ebdon (assistant 1791-1792)

Notes

This drawing, SM volume 74/12 and SM volume 74/37 are three of a set of related drawings along with SM volume 74/33, SM 1/4/6 and SM volume 74/34, showing the structure, dimensions and decoration of the Bank Stock Office, as executed. The drawing shown here is looking towards the west and cut through a plane along the side-aisle of the hall. The three drawings show the brick and stone vaulting of the hall and the underlying cellar. They also accurately show the elevations of the side-aisles and east, west and north walls. In this drawing and in SM volume 74/12, particular attention is paid to the structure of the piers and the various courses in the vaulting of bricks and hollow-cone pots, whereas SM volume 74/37 focuses more on the cellar foundations.

The inverted segmental arches at the bottom of the three drawings make up the base layer of the foundation. Significantly the drawing shows the lateral arches to have been constructed as segmental arches, but given semi-circular profiles by extending the line of the arch beneath the projecting impost bricks. Soane was less concerned with expressing structure than achieving just the right aesthetic balance. Set into these impost blocks, as well as the clerestory ones above, are iron tie rods, shown as thin, blue rectangles, similarly shown in SM volume 74/33 and SM 1/4/6.

Literature

D. Abramson, Building the Bank of England: money, architecture, society 1694-1942, 2005, p.107

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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