[4] Design for the front part of a hothouse, cross-section, datable to August 1792

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Country houses, etc.
  - Wimpole Hall, Cambridgeshire: alterations to house and estate buildings for Philip Yorke, 3rd Earl of Hardwicke, 1790-1794; presentation drawing 1800; surveys 1818 (70)
    - Estate buildings, 1792-1794 (42)
      - Designs for a hothouse, 1792 (5)

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Reference number

SM 8/3/35

Purpose

[4] Design for the front part of a hothouse, cross-section, datable to August 1792

Aspect

Cross-section

Scale

bar scale of 1/7 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

dimensions given in pen and pencil

Signed and dated

August 1792
datable to August 1792 (see Notes in group-folder)

Medium and dimensions

pen and grey and pink washes, pencil, on laid paper (487 x 387)

Hand

Soane Office, draughtsman
Soane office

Watermark

B and fleur-de-lis

Notes

A hothouse design is shown in section on drawings 3 to 5. Drawing 3 is a preliminary drawing, showing a design similar to drawing 1. Drawing 4 is a copy, with slight pencil alterations that are executed in the more finished drawing 5.

The design provides three systems for heating the room to a suitable temperature for growing pineapples. The planting bed at the centre of the room is warmed by the decaying bark packed within it (see drawing 1). Also providing heat are the triple-glazed lean-to roof and south-facing walls. Lastly, flues filled with hot air surround the room behind thin brick walls. Circulation around the room is provided by a passage measuring 2 feet 3 inches wide (altered to 2 feet).

The office Daybook of 1792 records that Thomas Chawner and Frederick Meyer were 'drawing sections of Hot house at Wimp[o]le' on 15 August 1792. Soane delivered to Lord Hardwicke a design for the hothouse the next day; the drawings included 'parts at large', probably drawing 2 and a fair copy of drawing 5. More design drawings for hothouses were made in the following week and working drawings were not made until May of the next year, indicating that Lord Hardwicke was not satisfied with this proposal. On 7 September Chawner went to Bentley Priory to draw a plan and section of the hothouse and send it to Wimpole, perhaps as a reference for improved designs.

Level

Drawing

Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation

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).