[373] Alternative design, New Law Courts, 1 April 1824

Explore Collections

You are here: CollectionsOnline / [373] Alternative design, New Law Courts, 1 April 1824

Browse

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)

Use of images and copyright
Enlarge this Image

Print this image in A4 view

Reference number

SM 53/3/60

Purpose

[373] Alternative design, New Law Courts, 1 April 1824

Aspect

Plan of the main (ground) floor of the New Law Courts, with the original groundplan to New Palace Yard shown (in unwashed outline) and proposed reductions in the building's footprint and revisions to ancillary accommodation indicated (in pink), with preliminary revisions to the New Palace Yard façade (in pencil), unexecuted

Scale

bar scale of ¹/₄ inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

Outline of a Plan for Altering the New Courts / agreeably to the directions of a Select Committee / of the House of Commons. / 25^th. March. 1824. / Design N^o. 2. / N^o. 2 / Bail Court / Corridor. / Court of King’s Bench. / Court of Common Pleas / WaterCloset / Attendants / on the / Lord Chief Justice. / Lord Chief Justice’s / Retiring Room / The Court of Exchequer. / The Court of Equity. / Judge’s Retiring Room / Recess for / the / Court Keeper / Area. / Staircase / Scale of Feet / (pencil) [_] M^r. Bankes Sen[io]^r / Octagon at 7 feet Messrs. Bankes / Williamson & / Sir C[harles] Long / Square Tower [_] / Sir Ch[arles] Long / Col. Trench / Mr. W[illiam]. Bankes like [_] my plan [_] dimensions given

Signed and dated

01/04/1824
Lincolns Inn Fields / 1^st. April. 1824

Medium and dimensions

Pencil, pen, wash, coloured washes of buff, blue and pink, within triple ruled border pricked for transfer on wove paper (782 x 569)

Hand

Soane Office, draughtsman

Verso

see separate entry for SM 53/3/60v

Watermark

J Whatman

Notes

This drawing records the discussions with the Select Committee with regard to the maximum encroachment of the New Law Courts towards New Palace Yard. A diagonal line from the pavilion tower of the Stone Building to Westminster Hall is clearly labelled M^r. Banks Sen[ior]^r, though subsequently a more generous perimeter line appears to have been reached, with discussion focusing upon the plan of a corner turret.

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).