[55] Survey, Court of Common Pleas, 12 April 1823

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Office of Works
  - London: Palace of Westminster: The New Law Courts, surveys and designs, 1820-32 (507)
    - Survey Drawings - Previously Extant Buildings, 1820-23 (122)
      - Courts & Offices Surveys (110)
        East Range, 1820-23 (25)

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Reference number

SM Vol 48/46

Purpose

[55] Survey, Court of Common Pleas, 12 April 1823

Aspect

Section through the basement and main (first) floors of the Court of Common Pleas, the Judges Robing Room and Record Room, with furnishings

Scale

to a rough scale

Inscribed

Section of the Court of Common Pleas and the Robing Room / A (x 2) B C D-A [compound letter] / West[minste]^r^.Hall / Picture / level of Robing room / 7 feet 8 inch[e]^s above / the level of the Court / of Common Pleas / marked x / Court. yard. dimensions given

Signed and dated

12/04/1823
12^th. April 1823

Medium and dimensions

Pencil, pink wash, pen, on wove paper bound in volume (272 x 211)

Hand

Arthur Patrick Mee (1802 - 1868), draughtsman
The Day Book entry 12 April 1823 notes that Arthur Mee was Sketching at the new Courts at / Westminster.

Notes

This section is taken looking to the south, with Westminster Hall to the left. In the inscription details A and B are given on drawing SM Vol 48/45. Details C and D-A are given on drawing SM Vol 48/47. In should be noted that this Court room, lit solely by a clerestory lantern, offers a direct precedent for Soane's system of lighting the New Law Courts, though his interest in devising such solutions had already been indicated throughout his architectural oeurve, most notably at the Bank of England.

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.

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).