[377] Alternative design, Westminster Hall and New Law Courts, c early April 1824

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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 One: Solid Block, April 1824 (6)

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Reference number

SM 53/8/56

Purpose

[377] Alternative design, Westminster Hall and New Law Courts, c early April 1824

Aspect

Exterior perspective of the New Law Courts from the north west, Gothicized variant with a Record building added to the east of Westminster Hall, unexecuted

Scale

to a scale

Signed and dated

c 04/1824

Medium and dimensions

Pencil, wash, sepia wash, pen, within partial single border on wove paper (583 x 395)

Hand

Soane Office, draughtsman

Watermark

Weatherley & Lane / 1818

Notes

The drawing appears unrelated to any other Gothicising scheme, in that the New Law Court’s northern extent is taken back to the penultimate northern bay of Westminster Hall. Such a proposal would have necessitated the total demolition of the Court of King’s Bench and most of the Bail Court. The corner tower shown here would therefore be that of the return wing of the Stone Building, tricked out with polygonal corner turrets and Gothic windows. The idiom adopted, with large six-light windows to the ground floor set in recessed arches with quatrefoil friezes beneath, appears closer to the manner of James Wyatt than to Soane.

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).