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Purpose

Variant scheme B, 18 December 1785 (5)

Notes

Comparison with the ground floor of scheme A shows that (drawing 4) a portico has been added to the south (entrance) front, the vestibule has been reduced so as to make room for the addition of a dressing room and muniment room to the library which has lost its bow front and the eating room and withdrawing room have been re-configured so that the north and south walls are straight and the east and west walls are bowed.

The first floor plan (drawing 5) shows the outline of that part of the original Tudor house that was to be kept together with later but existing rooms to the north-west. Together these were to provide five bedrooms. The three new reception rooms of the ground floor are shown to be single storey with each having a pyramidal roof. The attic floor (drawing 6) has four bedrooms all within the structure of the original house except for a new wall with window added to the east side.

The entrance elevation (together with the the plans) is interesting in the way it shows the re-facing that Soane proposed for its three storeys. The ground floor is Soane's own: symmetrical either side of the portico though the right-hand windows are blind. The seven windows of the first and of the attic floors are carefully balanced by two blind windows on the right-hand side. A thicket of trees partly conceals the unwanted old west wing that Soane wishes to demolish. Soane contrives with the addition of new windows, a pediment, a cornice, a well placed chimney stack and a new skin of masonry to create a dignified mansion for his client.

The end elevation of scheme B (drawing 8) is very close to that of scheme A (drawing 3) though now the pyramid roofs to the new ground floor rooms are shown.

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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 Variant scheme B, 18 December 1785 (5)