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  • image SM Adam volume 36/100
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Reference number

SM Adam volume 36/100

Purpose

[4] Design for a house, 1790, partly executed

Aspect

Ground plan of an L-shaped house, with a long western range, and two shorter southern ranges. The long western range has a projecting central block containing a three-bay entrance composed of a central window or door flanked by slit windows, and set behind a portico of paired columns; and this central block is flanked by single-bay recessed blocks containing windows; and these are flanked by single-bay blocks which are further recessed and contain doors; and beyond are projecting end bays which contain tripartite windows: one blind and one open. The end bay to the left (north) with a blind tripartite window, has a three-bay side elevation, and the end bay to the right (south) with an open tripartite window, is connected to one of the short southern ranges, with a seven-bay south front containing a central door, flanked by a slit window and a window to each side, and with a tripartite window in the slightly projecting end bay. This southern range has a three-bay link to the rear, connected to the western range, as well as the other southern range, which is shown with three bays, but is incomplete in the drawing. The first of the two southern ranges is drawn in pink, communicating that this part of the design was being designed and next to be built

Scale

bar scale of 1 ½ inches to 10 feet

Inscribed

Plan of the Principal Story / for John Fenton Cawthorn Esqr (for John Genon Cawthorn Esqr in the hand of William Adam and underwritten in pencil) / Stables / Water Closet / Court / Mr Cawthorns Dressing room / Drawing room / Passage / Parlor / Passage / Area / Eating room / Hall / Bed Chamber / Dressing room / Powdering room / Water Closet / Housekeepers room / Butlers room and some measurements given (verso) Fenton Cawthorne Esqr / 4/3 / 21 (in pencil) / these Plans go 21st into the Book / 5

Signed and dated

  • 05/06/1790
    Right copy / 5t. June 179[cropped] datable to 1790

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil, wash and pink wash on laid paper (514 x 369)

Hand

Adam office hand, possibly Robert Morison, with addition to title inscription in the hand of William Adam (underwritten in pencil)

Watermark

Fleur de lis within crowned cartouche

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, Index p. 53
Rowan, 1985, p. 82
Rowan, 1988, p. 100
King, 2001, Volume II, p. 165
For a full list of literature references see scheme notes.

Level

Drawing

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

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.

Browse (via the vertical menu to the left) and search results for Drawings include a mixture of Concise catalogue records – drawn from an outline list of the collection – and fuller records where drawings have been catalogued in more detail (an ongoing process).