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  • image SM 78/6/2
Drawing. SM 78/6/2. ©Sir John Soane's Museum, London. Photo: Ardon Bar-Hama
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Reference number

SM 78/6/2

Purpose

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

Aspect

Plan and elevation of a two-storey house with flanking pavilions attached by single-storey service wings. There is an attached office court to the right side of the sheet. The main block has a pitched roof, with four bays to the garden elevation and three bays to the front elevation where the main entrance is off centre. The pavilions have a mezzanine storey over a string-course, and shallow hipped roofs. The windows are full height on the ground storey but truncated in the upper storey and the mezzanine of the pavilions. Astylar pilasters divide the bays of the connecting wings

Scale

bar scale of 4/5 inch to 10 feet

Inscribed

No. 4 / John Rait Esqr. / Garden Elevation / 21 Sqr/ By a little additional expence, good Bedchambers might be obtained over the Bedchamber, the Butlers and Housekeepers rooms ~ The Room markt Storeroom might be a room for Accounts, and people on business might come in at the door adjoining to it ~ / Principal Floor, labelled: Stair, Dining room 20 ~ 16, Drawing room 20 ~17, Store room 15.9, Nursery 15~15, Dressg room 15~7, Bedroom 15~15, Butler 15~11, Housekeeper 15.11, Sevts hall 15.13, Stairs, Passage, Kitchen 15~14, Yard to the Kitchen Offices, Shed for different Offices.

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 (324x492)

Hand

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

Notes

In this alternative scheme for Anniston House Playfair detached the pavilions from the house using connecting corridor wings. As in the executed house and other versions of the design it has an off-centre main entrance and four bay garden front. A note in Playfair’s hand suggests the option of raising the connecting wings to accommodate extra bedrooms.

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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