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Presentation drawings of a design for the south front and variant designs for the entrance front, February 1789 (3)

Notes

Soane presented three variant designs of Bentley Priory on 18 February 1789. Drawings 4 to 14 are probably the 11 sheets presented to the Hon. John James Hamilton. Drawings 4 to 6 are elevations of the proposed wing, showing two variant designs for its north front (drawings 5 and 6) and a single design for the south front (drawing 4). The alternative north elevations correspond with design Nos I and II (drawings 7-10 and 11-13, respectively) and the south elevation corresponds with both designs, although it is labelled as design No I.

The south front of the existing house (drawing 4) has five bays alternating with Corinthian pilasters. Each bay has a recessed decorative panel between the first and ground floors. The attic is faced with pilasters surmounted by urns. The ground floor is raised and accessed by a staircase. The proposed east addition has taller storeys than the existing building and its face is relatively plain, with a bracketed cornice surrounding the hipped roof and minimal window dressings. A top-lit circular room is at the end of the house and articulated with blind windows and pedimented projections.

Drawings 5 and 6 show alternative north elevations, with design No I (drawing 5) projecting in two bays. As in the rear elevation, a bracketed cornice surrounds the hipped roof.

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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.

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Contents of Presentation drawings of a design for the south front and variant designs for the entrance front, February 1789 (3)