[1] Record drawing, Palace of Westminster and Law Courts, 7 October 1820

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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)
    - Survey Drawings - Previously Extant Buildings, 1820-23 (122)
      - Site Surveys, 1820-23 (9)

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Reference number

SM 53/1/12

Purpose

[1] Record drawing, Palace of Westminster and Law Courts, 7 October 1820

Aspect

Plan of the main (first) floor of the Palace of Westminster, with buildings between the river and the east wall of Westminster Hall shown in perimeter block only, with Westminster Hall and the Law Courts to the west of the latter shown in wash, The Stone Building (in yellow), the Court of Requests and adjoining offices as far as The Painted Chamber

Scale

to a scale

Inscribed

Second Plan / of Wesminster Hall. / and / The Adjoining Offices. / Garden (x 2) / Clerk of the / House of Commons. / Auditor of the Exchequer / Stables. / House of / Commons / Lobby of the House / of / Commons. / Speaker's Cloister / Westminster Hall. / Room for / Council / Lord / Chancellor's / Room. / Court of Exchequer / yard (x 3) / Court of / Common Pleas. / Common / Pleas Chamber / Custos / Brevium. / Judges / Chamber / Records / Flat over / Footman's Room / Court of Wards / Court / of Elections / Ordnance Office / Kings Bench Treasury

Signed and dated

07/10/1820
Copy / at Office of Works 7^th. Oct[obe]^r 1820

Medium and dimensions

Pencil, wash, yellow wash, pen, pricked for transfer on wove paper (745 x 581)

Hand

Probably Edward Foxhall (1793 - 1862), draughtsman

Notes

This drawing, as the inscription makes clear, is a copy of a drawing in the possession of the Office of Works (see SM 36/1/11). The current copy is not as fully worked up as the latter, and the proposed flanking range and pavilion tower for The Stone Building along St Margaret's Street is omitted. The new chamber terminating the truncated Court of Exchequer range is also absent on this drawing.

Edward Foxhall is recorded in the Day Books as working on the Courts at Westminster from 9 - 12 October 1820; the only office pupil recorded as working on this project for this period. It is highly plausible that is drawing is associated with the latter.

Literature

Swayer, 1999: p. 488, footnote 1445

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).