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  • image SM 78/6/4
Drawing. SM 78/6/4. ©Sir John Soane's Museum, London. Photo: Ardon Bar-Hama
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Reference number

SM 78/6/4

Purpose

[3] Presentation drawings for alternative designs for Anniston House, 1784

Aspect

Top half of sheet:
Plan and elevation of a two-storey five-bay house with attached pavilion wings and shallow pitched hipped roofs. There is an attached office court to the right side of the sheet, screened by trees. On the front elevation, the door is located in the central bay and the wings stepped forward. On both the main block and the wings, the windows are full height on the ground storey and truncated in the upper storey

Bottom half of sheet:
Plan and elevation of a two-storey H-plan house with attached pavilion wings and an attached office court to the left side of the sheet, screened by trees. The main block has a pitched roof with three bays to the front elevation and four bays to the garden elevation. On the front elevation, the door is located off-centre and the wings stepped further forward to form a shallow court. On the garden front, the windows of the side wings are set within blind arches with astylar pilasters and a plinth. An alternative plan for one wing is also given

Scale

bar scale of 4/5 inch to 10 feet

Inscribed

No. 2 / Garden Elevation / The Offices to be Screen’d with Trees / Sqr. / Principal Story, labelled: Closet, Hall 8.6, 3.6, Dining room. 17~20~, Drawing room 19~15, Bedroom 13~15, Housekeeper 14~11~, W. Closet, Nursery 18. 13., Butler 14. 10, Kitchen 18~14, and in the office yard: Scullery, Pantry, Beer, Milk, Larder, Wood and Coals, Yard, Shed for Bottles, ashes do. Cleaning Knives and [illegible] / John Rait Esqr. / No. 3 / Garden Elevation / Sqr. / Plan of the Principal Story, labelled: Dining Room 20 by 17., Drawing room 20 ~15, Butlers Pantry 17.10, Presses, Housekeeper room 10~10, Kitchen 17~13~, Dressing room, Bedroom 13. 15., Nursery 17 -13, and in the office yard: Trees and Shrubs, Yard, Shed for Cleaning [illegible] &c., Sevts hall, scullery, Pantry, Beer, Milk, Larder, Privy, Privy, Wood and Coals

Signed and dated

  • 1784
    James Playfair Archt. 1784

Medium and dimensions

Pen and wash in grey and blue, with double ruled border on laid paper (628x467)

Hand

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

Notes

This sheet shows two of Playfair’s various schemes for Anniston House. No. 2 is the most proper classical composition of all the schemes, with correct symmetrical elevations, a five bay garden elevation and the shallow Italianate hipped roofs of which Playfair was fond. No. 3 reverts to the arrangement which would eventually be executed with an off-centre main entrance and four bay garden front. Its plan is almost the same as the executed design only with the room allocations flipped around and without the book room. The two designs explore the arrangement of a single office court to one side of the house, originally seen in design [1] and later rejected in favour of a symmetrical design of offices on either side.

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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