[1] Preliminary working drawing for central dome with groin-vaulted end-bays, side aisles and eastern recess, showing clerestory lunettes, segmental arches and panelled pilasters, October 1797

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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)
      - Consols Transfer Office, 1797-1799 (75)

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Reference number

SM volume 74/50

Purpose

[1] Preliminary working drawing for central dome with groin-vaulted end-bays, side aisles and eastern recess, showing clerestory lunettes, segmental arches and panelled pilasters, October 1797

Aspect

Plan of the Transfer Office and The Longitudinal Section

Scale

bar scale

Inscribed

as above, The Bank of England, skylight (twice), Wills and Powers, Chief Clerk, Unclaimed Dividends, Centre of 4 Per Cent, Base to project / ¼ of an inch / June 16^th1798 (twice), dimensions and (pencil) calculation given

Signed and dated

(red ink) L. I. F. Oct^r26^th 1797

Hand

Soane office

Notes

This drawing and SM volume 75/51 are the first dated drawings from Soane's office for the Consols Transfer Office, that survive. The plan, within the scheme for the Lothbury Court, was approved on 10 October 1797. To see the drawing approved by the Committee on 10 October 1797, see SM 9/4/30.

The office had an east-west orientation with its longitudinal axis running across the north end of the Four Per Cent and Bank Stock Offices. The earliest ground plans for the north-east extension, including rough preliminary designs for the Consols Transfer Office, however, date to 1794. In these drawings the office's longitudinal axis runs parallel to Bartholomew Lane on a north-south orientation. To see the earlier plans go to SM 9/3/3 and SM 9/3/4.

The design was modelled on the scheme for the Bank Stock Office. However, the new hall was not constricted by the original foundations and thus Soane was able to raise the height of the dome, lengthen the end-bays and add a recess at the east end. It was a four-part plan, closer to Antique models of Roman basilicas.

Literature

D. Abramson, Money's architecture: The building of the Bank of England, 1731-1833, Pt. 2, Doctoral thesis for the Department of Fine Arts, Harvard University, 1993, ill. 181

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).