Scale
1/3 inch to 1 foot
Inscribed
Capstan used in raising Portico at Chillington, members labelled 6 ins square (4 times), 6 x 7½ deep and some other dimensions given including 10.0 for the longest beam
Medium and dimensions
Pen, sepia and yellow washes, shaded on laid paper (530 x 730)
Hand
pupil see note below
Watermark
J Whatman, fleur-de-lis within crowned cartouche and below, ornate W
Notes
It is not known when this drawing was copied; the hand appears not to be that of the four pupils in the office between 1784 and 1790 (Sanders, McDonnell, Chawner and Laing nor that of, say, Robert Woodgate, an office clerk from 1788 to 1791 or William Heaton, clerk of works at Chillington 1786-7. The crane and capstan for lifting the stones of the Chillington portico were probably in use by the end of 1786 since, for example, a 'Drawing of Base to Column' was sent on 10 June of that year (Journal 1). The columns of the portico were two-storeys high (28 feet 6 inches) and supported a heavy entablature and pediment. The crane was not necessarily designed within the Soane office, a competent builder or clerk of works may have done so and it would have been made by a carpenter.
Level
Drawing
Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation
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
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