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Along with the Courts of Common Pleas and Exchequer, this was one of the three High Courts of the Common Law; a status demonstrated by its convention of sitting in Westminster Hall. Its location at the south-east corner on the dais demonstrated this Court’s emergence from the administration of the royal household; the Curia Regis. It dealt with matters which had direct bearing upon royal prerogatives and interests. It could also hear appeals from the Court of Common Pleas. As a result of the Supreme Court of Judicature Acts (1873-75) this Court’s functions were merged with the other superior courts to form the High Court of Justice.
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).
Contents of Northern Range - Court of King's Bench, 1823-29 (207)
- Original Scheme, 1823-26 (59)
- Symmetrical Palladian; round corners, 1823-24 (2)
- Projecting Curved Corners Scheme, c 1824-26 (2)
- Giant Order Scheme, 1823-26 (17)
- Select Committee Revisions, 1824-29 (79)
- Retroactive Designs, 1826-29 (48)