[12] Variant design for attic above the gateway, in Soane's hand, January 1796

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Bank of England
  - Bank of England, City of London for the Governor and Company of the Bank of England, 1788-1834 (1356)
    - 1791-1801 Rebuilding of offices in the east wing and north-east extension (431)
      - Lothbury and Bartholomew Lane screen walls, 1794-1797 (66)

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Reference number

SM 10/2/9

Purpose

[12] Variant design for attic above the gateway, in Soane's hand, January 1796

Aspect

Rough elevation looking south of a projecting pedestal of the attic, showing fluted pilasters on either side of a roundel and, to either side, statues raised on small pedestals (verso) detail of moulding in attic pilaster

Scale

bar scale

Inscribed

(Soane) Width of Street and dimensions given (verso, Soane) Query / Five or seven / Sinkings on / the face of each of / the Pilasters, One Inch / Deep, ½ of Pilaster, M^r Richard / York / Pembroke (see Notes)

Signed and dated

Jan 31 1796

Hand

Soane

Watermark

Britannia and crown

Notes

This drawing, SM 10/2/10, SM 10/2/11, SM 10/2/13, SM 10/2/12, SM 10/2/16 and SM 10/2/17 show slight variations in the proportions of the attic. Drawings for the screen wall mostly concern the attic for, as Daniel Abramson writes, 'it was here, he believed along the skyline that architectural affect was most at issue' (Abramson, Money's architecture: the building of the Bank of England, 1731-1833, 1993, p.355).

The inscription on the verso of the drawing is a description of the characteristically Soanean fluted lines on a pilaster, including the depth. Soane here calls these incisions sinkings.

A William Richards worked for Soane's office from 1789 to 1803, serving as an outdoor clerk on buildings in London including the Bank. There is no record of a clerk, pupil, or principal tradesman by the names of York(e), Pembroke, or Coxe, but it is possible that these were tradesmen.

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).