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Notes
Executed predominantly by Charles Richardson from August - December 1826, these designs further explored the possibility of retaining the commenced façade to the Court of King’s Bench, but recasting it in Gothic. The pseudo-Serliana windows are given pointed arches and Perpendicular tracery, while the giant order is replaced by buttresses and the attic by battlements. That the underlying geometry and structure was to be retained is clear from the comparative elevation (SM 53/8/31).
The proposal to reinstate the subsidiary windows at first-floor level was trialled, and subsequently rejected, in Richardson’s revised elevation SM 53/8/50, drawn at some point in August - September 1826. The final design, drawn again by Richardson on 11 November 1826 must have satisfied Soane as the most practical solution to recasting his façade in deference to Westminster Hall. This is suggested by the fact a model of this solution was subsequently made (SM MR 30), which reinstated the subsidiary rectangular windows shown on SM 53/8/50.
Level
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 Buttressed Corners Scheme, August-December 1826 (6)
- [472] Comparative design, New Law Courts, August 1826
- [473] Revised design, New Law Courts, c August-September 1826
- [474] Penultimate design, New Law Courts, 18 August 1826
- [475] Penultimate design, Court of King's Bench, 11 November 1826
- [476] Record drawing, Westminster Hall and New Law Courts, December 1826
- [477] Drawing for publication, Westminster Hall and New Law Courts, 18 December 1826