The three-bay front of Dance's unidentified villa has a segmental bowed centre (with an oval entrance hall behind it) answered by a wider segmental bow on the garden front with a tripartite window that lights the drawing room. This runs the width of the house and is composed of three circles, two of 22 foot diameter either side of one of 36 foot diameter which has four alcoves framed by columns, while the ends have two plain alcoves each. The alcoves were probably intended for sculpture. Between the hall and drawing room is a geometrical stair within an apsidal-ended compartment. Thus the plan is essentially that of a six-part villa designed for entertainment with half of the ground floor taken up by the drawing room that gives on to a dining room 39.0 by 22.0 feet with segmental ends. The remaining part of the plan is given to a 'Library or Bedroom' that is the only room with four corners, a dressing room with apse, an irregularly planned water closet, and a secondary stair with an apsidal end. There are ten alcoves in all, the left-hand external wall is windowless. The area of the ground floor is 4690 square feet, the kitchen and other offices are in the basement and there is a bedroom floor.

The strong geometry of this villa design links it to the unexecuted designs for a chapel at Stratton, 1806, of which one of the plans ([SM D1/7/4]) is strikingly similar in handling and medium to [SM D2/8/8].

Group

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

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