Scale
bar scale of 1/10 inch to 1 foot
Inscribed
Design for the New Courts at Westminster. / Part of Westminster Hall. / Scale of. Feet. / Part of Westminster Hall. / Entrance into the / Court of King's Bench &c: / Entrance into the / Court of Common Pleas. / Entrance into the / Vice-Chancellor's / Court. / Entrance into the / Court of Chancery. / The Court of Exchequer. / Water / Closet. (x 8) / Court. ( x 2) / Coffee House. / Entrance into the / Coffee House. / Entrance Hall to / The Court of King's Bench / &c. / Entrance into the Court of King's Bench, / The Court of Exchequer, and the / Court of Equity, &c. / Court. of. King's Bench. / Tribunal (x 3) / Closet. (x 2) / Judge's retiring / Room. / Lobby. (x 4) / Staircase. (x 5) / Bail Court. / Court of Common Pleas. / Judge's Room, of the / Court of Common Pleas. / Area. (x 3) / Cust[os]: Brev[ium]: / The Vice-Chancellor's / Court. / The Vice-Chancellor's / Retiring Room. / Corridor of Communication. / Grand Jury / Room. / The Court of / Chancery. / Attendants on the / Lord Chancellor. /Barrister's / Room. / The Lord Chancellor's / Room. / Waiting Room. / (pencil) Entrance / into the / High Court / of Chan[cery].
Signed and dated
Medium and dimensions
Pencil, wash, coloured washes of buff, pink and blue, pen, within octuple ruled wash border, pricked for tansfer on wove paper (919 x 611)
Hand
Soane Office, draughtsman
Watermark
J Whatman / 1820
Notes
A revised version of that shown in SM 53/1/17, rationalised and more cohesive as a unified scheme. The Courts of Chancery and King's Bench have been transposed. Sawyer argues that this predates the associated presentation plan, and that the date is retroactive (Sawyer, 1999: p. 502; footnote 1478).
Literature
Sawyer, 1999: p. 502; footnote 1478
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.
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).
