Preliminary design

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- 'Original Sketches / Miscellaneous / Architectural / Subjects': album with 195 drawings by Soane, Dance, Holland and others, dated c.1757 to 1818 (volume 42)
  - Volume 42/155: John Soane (1753-1837): Stables in a Primitive style at Betchworth Castle, Surrey for Henry Peters, 4 June 1799

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Reference number

SM volume 42/155 recto and verso

Purpose

Preliminary design

Aspect

Plan with one wing longer than the other, plan details of wall junctions and openings, part-elevation of ? covered walkway with indication of flintwork; (verso) Elevation of window and Shutter in Drawing room

Inscribed

Betchworth Castle, Pilasters black flints / between Pil:[asters] common flint walling / Flint Walling 3:3:0 (£3.3s) per Rod, oak posts / on stone / Cills, dimensions given and calculations; (verso) as above, 3' 4 ½ ', some calculations and (pencil) Dysart (the rest illegible - Dysart may refer to the fifth Earl of Dysart whose younger brother was a client of Soane's see G.Darley, John Soane: an accidental Romantic, 1999, p.65)

Signed and dated

June 4. 99

Medium and dimensions

Brown pen, pencil, hatching on laid paper with four fold marks and folded to fit (319 x 407)

Hand

Soane

Watermark

C Willmott 1798 and lion with hat on staff and arrows within a crowned oval frame

Notes

From about 1798, Soane made alterations to Betchworth Castle (see 42/41) as well as, for example, additions such as a greenhouse (42/141) and dairy (42/154) and see also the Concise Catalogue for other drawings for Betchworth. This design for stables is in a primitive style seen as early as 1783 in the dairy built at Hammels Park (q.v.).The stable block, all that survives of Betchworth Castle and its estate buildings, was built about half a mile from the house and has since been converted into small houses. The design catalogued here is dated 4 June 1799 and was preceded by designs made 11 August and 13 September 1798 and followed by other designs dated 28 May, 11 and 12 June 1799 and by presentation designs dated June 1799 (SM 64/4/67-73). These last show Soane's use of flint with brick banding for the walls and the pilasters.

Literature

D.Stroud, Sir John Soane, 2nd ed., 1996, pp.177-9; P.Dean, 'Country houses and the Primitive', M.Richardson and Stevens, John Soane architect: master of space and light, 1999, pp.114-21,

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).