[436] Alternative design, Court of King's Bench, c 1824-25

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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)
    - New Law Courts - Second Scheme, 1821-29 (345)
      - Northern Range - Court of King's Bench, 1823-29 (207)
        Select Committee Revisions, 1824-29 (79)
        Alternative Number Five: Octagonal Corner Turret, May 1824-April 1829 (27)
        Design and working drawings, May 1824-26 (21)

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Reference number

SM 53/4/72

Purpose

[436] Alternative design, Court of King's Bench, c 1824-25

Aspect

Elevations for railings in New Palace Yard, outside the north wall of the Court of King's Bench, unknown if as executed

Scale

bar scale of ¹/₄ inch to one foot

Inscribed

Design for the Iron Railing in the North Front of the Court of King's Bench at Westminster. dimensions given

Signed and dated

1824-25

Medium and dimensions

Pencil, wash, pen, pricked for transfer on wove paper (727 x 499)

Hand

Soane Office, draughtsman

Notes

These three designs for exterior railings along the rebuilt north wall of the Court of King’s Bench all feature nineteen bays set into a plinth course. They run from Westminster Hall to the octagonal turret on the new façade's north-west corner. The variant designs are in response to the gradient of New Palace Yard, which descends towards the Thames (to the east). The gradient has been scratched out and redrawn on the topmost design; this is the only one to include a gate at the junction with Westminster Hall. Its plinth is also perpendicular. The second omits the gate and accommodates the gradient with three sweeping risers, whilst a third shows the plinth course following the gradient. An intermediary design with one swept riser is sketched in pencil.

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).