Sketch designs and design, not executed (3)

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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.
  - Castle Eden, County Durham: (executed) porch, (unexecuted) villa and stables for Rowland Burdon, October 1780 (4)

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Reference number

SM (1) volume 42/121 recto and verso (2) volume 42/125 recto (3) 5/2/8

Purpose

Sketch designs and design, not executed (3)

Aspect

1 Elevation of five-bay, two-storey, porticoed house with single storey pavilion wings and two variant plans; elevation of five-bay, two-storey house with single storey portico without pediment and plan; perspective detail of roman tiles; (verso) elevation similar the first one but with the details of the centre bays inked out, and plan; unidentified detail2 Plan and elevation close to the 'No.3' of the variant designs of drawing 1 and (verso) rough unrelated plans3 Plan with some pencil amendments and front elevation

Scale

(2) to a scale (3) 1/9 in to 1 ft (approximately)

Inscribed

1 (recto) Castle Eden, N^o2, N^o3, North, Lib.[rary], Parl.[our] Kit.[chen], Scull.[ery], H[all], some dimensions given and Mount St / M^rsAnn London Bull & / Morn^gChronicle / instead of Courant (the Morning Chronicle and London Courant were newspapers, the London Bull[etin ?] has not been traced) 2 labelled Pantry, Scullery, Kitchen, Closet, Draw^g/ Room, Eat^gParl., Library, Hall and dimensions and calculations given3 labelled; Eating Parlor / 20' by 16', Drawing room / 18' by 22'6", Bedroom / 20' by 13:6, Water Clos^t, Dressing room / 15' by 10:6, Cabinet / 12'x5' (right-hand wing) Stewards Parlor / 14':6" Square, Evidence / room, Stewards / Kitchen / 8' by 12', (left-hand wing) Wet Larder, Dry Larder, Passage to Kitchen, Kitchen / 14':6" by 20'

Signed and dated

(1) Oct. 7. 1780

Medium and dimensions

(1) Brown pen, pencil on laid paper with four fold marks (220 x 367) (2) pen, sepia wash, pencil (verso) pencil, on laid paper with eight fold marks (235 x 317) (3) pen, sepia and raw umber washes, pencil, shaded within double ruled border on laid paper (382 x 473)

Hand

Soane

Watermark

(1) post horn within a crowned cartouche and GR below (Heawood 2754) (2) T French (3) fleur-de-lis within a crowned cartouche with GR below

Notes

P. du Prey identified drawing 3 as a presentation drawing from Soane's sketch designs for a three-part villa for Rowland Burdon and regarded it 'as one of the most significant domestic designs of Soane's early period.' For example, the compact planning, and the bowed centre of the back facade were to become important features of Soane's country house planning throughout the 1780s. du Prey (op.cit.) also draws attention to the sketches of the Villas Maldura and Molin near Padua drawn by Soane on his way home to England in May 1780, as a source for Soane's Castle Eden sketch designs. (see' Notes Italy & I.talian language &c', 1780 (SM volume 162), 160 recto) cross reference needed

Literature

P.du Prey, John Soane: the making of an architect, 1982, pp. 120-22

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).