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  • image SM 9/3/8
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Reference number

SM 9/3/8

Purpose

[7] Survey of the existing property, with preliminary design for the north-west extension and the realigned Princes Street and a design for a domed central pavilion on Lothbury Street, 1800

Aspect

Site plan of the Bank showing holdings and two alternative designs for Princes Street; elevation of existing Lothbury Street front; and elevation for proposed Lothbury Street front with domed central pavilion

Scale

bar scale

Inscribed

No 3, key A to CD, References to the plan AA These parts to be added to the Garden belonging to the Worshipful Company of Grocers agreeable to the first proposition. // B This Wall to be built with a communication / into Princes Street // The difference in value between the Ground / marked AA and the Ground taken from the Grocers / Garden partly forming the continuation of Princes Street / and partly added to the Bank (marked with the letters CD) to be assessed and paid for. Plan labelled: The Bank of England, Entrance to Bank from Lothbury, Lothbury (twice), This part of Princes Street to be shut up, Draper Court (twice), Numbers 7 to 25, Proposed continuation of Princes Street, Proposed outline of the Bank, Proposed line of Houses. 1800., The Grocer's Company Garden, Princes Street, Present Line of Houses, Threadneedle Street, The Sun Fire Office, The Bank Coffee House, Bank Street, The Royal Exchange, St Bartholomew's Lane, Church, Tower, Boughey, Lacy & Whitton, Locket / Cock Tavern, Weller, Messrs Grote & Co, Messrs Pole & Co, Capel Court

Signed and dated

  • Copied Novr 1st 1808 from / the original plan made in March 1800

Medium and dimensions

Pen, grey, green, orange and pink washes, within double ruled wash border, on wove paper (515 x 728)

Hand

Soane office

Notes

This drawing, SM 9/3/19, SM 9/3/12 and SM 9/3/18 show variant designs for the screen wall on the north side of the Bank, on Lothbury Street. The designs include a grandiose projecting blind portico in the centre of the wall. The pavilion-like projection consisted of four raised columns in antis framed by pilasters and surmounted by a dome. The drawings show slightly varying designs for the dome.

The drawing shows the holdings to the south-east. In 1800 the Bank gained permission from Parliament for widening Bartholomew Lane by pulling down these four houses and inserting a footpath through part of the tower of St Bartholomew's Church. This plan was never executed because of the death of the Bishop of London in May 1808, with whom the negotiations had been made; his successor was less amenable. Later, in 1825, the Bank intended to submit another proposal but the financial crisis of that year led to further postponement.

Literature: W. Marston Acres, The Bank of England from within, Oxford, 1931. pp. 397, 476-477

Level

Drawing

Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation

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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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