[68] Alternative design for the west side of the Waiting Room Court, August 1803

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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)
    - 1799-1810 Expansions north-west and rebuilding of existing offices (487)
      - First phase of north-west extension: Waiting Room Court, Accountants Office and Doric Vestibule, 1801-1804 (111)

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Reference number

SM volume 73/31

Purpose

[68] Alternative design for the west side of the Waiting Room Court, August 1803

Aspect

Section

Scale

bar scale

Inscribed

The Bank, Colonade (sic) Court, elevation labelled (Soane, pencil): These wind[ows]: / to be as / high as / the Cieling / will admit and dimensions given

Signed and dated

Lincolns Inn Fields / Aug^st 30^th 1803

Hand

Soane office and Soane

Notes

This drawing, SM volume 75/63, SM volume 72/43, SM volume 72/44, SM volume 75/66, SM volume 73/34, SM volume 72/53, SM volume 73/33 and SM volume 75/62 show the west façade of the Court as executed aside from the ornamentation and attic. The drawings show variant designs, all of them having a balustrade and a central attic element aligned with the attached columns. The central attic pedestal consists of a variation of fluted pilasters capped by antefixes, with usually an ornamented panel between the pilasters. SM volume 73/33 includes a scrolled acroterion crowning this attic panel.

The attached columns are similar to the design shown in drawings SM volume 72/32, SM volume 73/25, SM volume 73/28, SM volume 73/27, SM volume 72/33, SM volume 73/29 and SM volume 73/36, but the columns have been doubled in height. The drawing shown here, an intermediary between the two designs, has two storeys of columns.

SM volume 72/43 shows ornamentation added to the façade, including caducei and an attic panel, as well as bracketed pediments crowning the windows. The inscriptions also concern the construction of the segmental arched ceiling of the Accountant's Office, consisting of courses of hollow cones anchored by stones secured with iron chains at the bases of the arch. As SM volume 72/29 and SM volume 75/64 show, the arched ceiling of the Accountants Office was protected by a separate roof. This was a wise choice, as Soane's earlier employment of cone roof construction, in the Bank Stock Office and the Rotunda, encountered persistent problems with weatherproofing.

Alterations, in Soane's hand, to SM volume 73/33 show a widening of the central projection to two bays rather than one. This modification suggests a design similar to the executed version, featuring plenty of space for windows.

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).