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  • image SM 78/6/3
Drawing. SM 78/6/3. ©Sir John Soane's Museum, London. Photo: Ardon Bar-Hama
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Reference number

SM 78/6/3

Purpose

[1] Presentation drawing for an alternative design for Anniston House, 1784

Aspect

Plans and elevations of a two-storey house with a semi-basement, the main block having three bays to the front elevation and four bays to the rear elevation, flanked by single-bay pavilion wings and an office court on one side screened with trees. The main door is off-centre and has a Doric porch with steps thrown over the basement. To either side of the principal plan are alternative plans for the wings enlarged to the full depth of the house. Also shown are a sketch for a version of the wings with Venetian windows and an H-plan layout of the principal floor

Scale

bar scale of 2/5 inch to 10 feet

Inscribed

Road Elevation / Garden Elevation / Height of stories. Principal floor. 13ft. Bedchamber ~ 10ft. Wings ~ Parlour Floor. 11.0 Bedrooms ~~ 7.0 / Bedchamber Story, labelled: Stair, Bedroom, Bedroom, dressngroom, Bedroom, Dressngroom, [illegible], Sevts room, Sevts room / Principal floor (alternative design), labelled: Bedroom 15-12, Passage, Drawing 20-14 Room, Dining room 22-17, Butler, Sevts hall, Kitchen, Dressng room, Housekeeper, Nursery, Yard for Kitchen Offices / In this Plan, the Kitchen is 3 feet lower than the Principal floor and communicates with the Stairs by a paSsage under the Bedroom / Kitchen Offices to be Screen’d wt Trees. / Sqr.,
Plan to left: Dressgroom, W.C., Nursery / Principal Story, labelled: W.C. Stairs, Study or Bedroom 15. by 13, Drawing room 20 by 15, Dining room 20 by 17, Nursery or Bedroom 18 by 15, Kitchen 18 by 15, and in the office yard: Washing Tubs, Scullery, Pantry, Milk house, Larder, Wood and Coals, Gentlemens, Sevts, Store room, Cover’d Passage, Pump, Yard, Ashes, Bottled &c. /
Plan to right: Housekeeper, Kitchen, Storeroom, Scullery, Passage.

Signed and dated

  • 1784
    James Playfair Archt. 1784

Medium and dimensions

Pen and wash in grey and blue, with single pencil sketch, within double ruled border on laid paper (sheet appears to have been cropped) (571x479)

Hand

Playfair, James (1755--1794) - Art collections

Notes

This is the most modest of Playfair’s various schemes for Anniston House. It shares with the executed version the uncomfortable arrangement of the off-centre main entrance and the four bay garden elevation. The arrangement of having a single office court to one side was explored in further designs (see [2-4]) before being rejected in favour of a symmetrical design of offices on either side. The sketch of the Venetian window and H-plan ground floor anticipate the final iteration of the scheme.

Level

Drawing

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.


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