[389] Penultimate design, New Law Courts, 14 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 Three: Polygonal Corner Turret, April 1824 (8)

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Reference number

SM 53/3/43

Purpose

[389] Penultimate design, New Law Courts, 14 April 1824

Aspect

Elevation of a Gothic façade to the Court of King's Bench, showing the north-west tower of Werstminster Hall with polygonal corner turret, not as executed, with dashed lines indicating the profile of the former Palladian façade, part executed

Scale

bar scale of ¹/₅ inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

Elevation of a Design for Gothicising the exterior of the New Court of King's Bench at Westminster. / as directed by the Select Committee of the House of Commons appointed 23^rd. March 1824._ / A / B / C / D / E / Feet / This Tower lowered 7'.0" and / made an octagon of 18:0 diam[ete]^r. / by Order of the Committee. 5^th May 1824 / These windows / omitted / Mem[orandum]:- this Window omitted by order / of the Committee. 5^th. May. 1824 / This Window / omitted by / order of the Comm[ittee]: / 5 May. 1824. dimensions given

Signed and dated

14/04/1824
14^th. April. 1824

Medium and dimensions

Pencil, pen, wash, part coloured washes including raw umber, burnt umber, Payne's grey and sepia, within double ruled border pricked for transfer on wove paper (741 x 537)

Hand

Soane Office, draughtsman

Notes

This drawing indicates the levels of the previous Palladian façade with dashed lines. The polygonal turret agrees with that shown in the first variant on SM 53/3/43, and revisions to its battlements have been lightly sketched in. One of its lancet windows has been struck through, and the elaborate mouldings and head stops to the windows of the principal floor were simplified in execution (compare SM 53/3/44).

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).