Scale
bar scale 1/8 inch to 1 foot
Inscribed
Ground Plan of Courts of / Exchequer / Common Pleas / Offices / Coffee Houses / Cellars &c. / Tower and / Staircase / of West[minste]r. Hall / This part / pulled down / Wine Cellar (x 5) / Closet (x 5) / Record Room under / the Exchequer Court / commonly called the / Queen's Kitchen / Passage leading into Westminster Hall / Parlor / Scullery / Yard / attached / to the Exchequer / Coffee House / Kitchen / Bar (x 3) / Room / Parlor / New Palace Yard / Kitchen / Oliver's / Coffee Room / (Mr. Dund) / Exchequer / Coffee Room / Mrs. Fendall / Bed / Chamber (x 2) / Saint Margaretts Street / DD EE FF GG / Conference R[oo]m (x 2) / The [_] Room (x 2) / barrons dimensions given
Signed and dated
- 07/09/1822
Sep[tembe]r. 7 1822
dated on SM 37/3/5
Medium and dimensions
Pencil, wash, pen, on wove paper (504 x 369), original sheet comprising of (251 x 369) SM/37/3/6 and (253 x 369) SM/37/3/5.
Hand
Sir John Soane RA (1753 - 1837), architect
The drawing is annotated in Soane's hand.
John William Hiort (1772 - 1861), draughtsman
The Day Book entry for 7 September 1822 notes that John Hiort was working on the Courts of Law / About Plans &c.
Watermark
fleur de lys and monogram dated 1817
Notes
Though catalogued as two separate sheets (SM 37/3/5 and SM 37/3/6), it is clear that this drawing was originally one sheet, which has divided along a vertical central fold. SM 37/3/6 formed the left-hand half and SM 37/3/5 the right-hand half of the original sheet. It is described here as per its original form. The area covered by the plan is immediately adjacent to the north-west corner of Westminster Hall. In the inscription, the section lines inscribed DD, EE, FF and GG correspond with the sections on SM 37/3/8. The plan of the Court of Common Pleas is only lightly drawn at the top right of SM 37/3/5, implying a focus solely upon the existing buildings which fell under the purview of the Court of Exchequer.
Level
drawing
Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation.
This catalogue of Soane’s designs for the New Law Courts was generously funded by The Worshipful Company of Mercers and The Pilgrim Trust.
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).
