[37] Plan of new (basement) offices

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Town houses
  - London: No. 49 (formerly 44) Grosvenor Square: alterations for Robert Knight, 1801-2 and 1818-19 (47)
    - Contract drawings for new offices stables and coach house 1818-19 (11)

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Reference number

SM 8/2/16

Purpose

[37] Plan of new (basement) offices

Aspect

Plan of the proposed New Offices &c to the house in Charles Street

Scale

bar scale of ¼ inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

as above, Robert Knight Esq^re, labelled Dust hole, Shoe Room, Larder, Passage to Kitchen &^c., Court, Coal Cellar, Scullery, Sink, Dresser, Door, Sky light, Arch, Stairs to Laundry, Closet fitted up / with Shelves, Charcoal, Kitchen, flat arch, dresser and some dimensions given and (signature) N^o 1 / 12 July 1819 / Sam^l Lake (verso) Plans of new Stables, Charles St Grosvenor Sqre / 5 Sep^r 1818

Signed and dated

04/09/1818
Lincolns Inn Fields / Sep^r 4 1818

Medium and dimensions

Pen, sepia, pink, raw umber and blue washes, pricked for transfer on wove paper (484 x 693)

Hand

The office Day Book for 4 September 1818 has an entry: Robert Knight Esq^re / About plan and Elevation / of Stable &c / Bailey / Foxhall' that is George Bailey (1792-1860), pupil and assistant (August 1808 - January 1837) and Edward Foxhall (1793-1862), pupil and assistant November 1812 - January 1821

Notes

The new basement housed kitchen, larder etc and a laundry so that the old basement service area would presumably still have been used for cellars, servants' hall, butller's and housekeeper's rooms as shown on earlier drawing [2].

The overall site is basically 180 feet from front to back and 28.8 feet wide. The length of the house including the 14 feet extension of 1802 (see, for example drawing [4] at ground floor level) is 88 feet. The length of the new offices at basement level (of 1818-19) is about 54 feet. The remaining area is forty feet long and into this was placed a stables 16 feet 1½ inches deep while the 'Standing for Three Carriages' with entrances and courtyard measured '23:0' by '33:9'. Added up (88 + 54 + 33:9) this comes to about 180 feet which suggests that the garden was entirely swallowed up? There might have been a paved garden of '28' 6"' wide and about 30 feet long over the basement extension (see drawing [38]) though this was overlooked by a two-storey kitchen and laundry.

Level

Drawing

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

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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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