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  • image SM 53/2/76

Reference number

SM 53/2/76

Purpose

[175] Revised design, New Law Courts, 25 September 1822

Aspect

Plan of the main (ground) floor of the New Law Courts, showing the area between Westminster Hall, the eastern range of The Stone Building and the central block of the latter, including the Vice-Chancellor's Court, the Court of Chancery, the accommodation for the Lord Chancellor, with section showing difference in floor levels, not as executed

Scale

bar scale of 1/5 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

Sketch of a Design for part of the New Law Courts at Westminster. / The Vice-Chancellors / Court / Flat / domical / [_] / Attendants / on the / Vice Chancellor / Robing Room / for the / Vice Chancellor / Lobby / Wat[er]: Clo[set]. (x 6) / Staircase (x 2) / Court (x 3) / Grand Jury / Rooms / Lanthorn / Light (x 3) / Furnace / for Warm[in]g / the High / court of / Chancer[y] / Robing room / for the / Lord Chancellor / bookcase (x 2) / N. / door / Attendants / on the / Lord Chan[cello]r. / Wash[ing] hands / Cl[oset]. / Vestibule. / Keeper of / the Court / Entrance from / the street into / the High Court / of Chancery / Law Library / Steps lead[in]g. to the staircase of the H[ouse]. of [Commons] / Barristers / Closet for / Wash[ing] hands / [_] / Floor of / W[estminster]. Hall / old floor of West[minste]r Hall made with [_] / foundation of Walls of the New Courts dimensions given

Signed and dated

  • 25/09/1822
    L[incolns]. I[nn]. F[ields]. / 25 Sept[ember]: 1822.

Medium and dimensions

Pencil, wash, with coloured washes of pink and blue, pen, pink pen, pricked for transfer on wove paper (782 x 566)

Hand

Sir John Soane RA (1753 - 1837), architect
This drawing has been annotated in Soane's hand.
Arthur Patrick Mee (1802 - 1868), draughtsman
The Day Book entry for 25 September 1822 notes that Arthur Mee was Drawing Plans for the new Courts at Westminster.

Notes

his design, with minor ammendments, is largely derived from the plan revised by Soane on drawing SM 53/2/75. Here, the ceilings of the Court rooms are shown in greater detail; that over the Court of Chancery, with three lantern lights, is utterly different from the dome and oculus solution indicated on the latter drawing. The semi-circular room adjoining the Vice Chancellor's Court (here identified as the latter's Robing Room) has been enlarged in this drawing, thus eliminating the surrounding light well shown in drawing SM 53/2/76. There is a schematic section recording difference in floor levels in the left margin.

Literature

Sawyer, 1999: p 528: footnote 1558

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).