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61 as above, labelled H[ouse]Keeper, Store room, Larder, Scullery, (feint pencil) Cleaning / Shoes/ Knives / Bottle Room, Dairy, Wet larder, (feint pencil) Laundry and some dimensions given
62 Elevation on the line KL, Section on the Line H J, labelled Ground, Ground line, Ro.[und] Arch (twice), Gauged (three times), some dimensions given and, verso (Baldwin) Mr Dillingham / a General Plan of House / & Offices
63 North West front, South West front of the Offices at Letton Hall / G.H. must agree in every respect with I K, North East front labelled Windows / at top and This Roof Pediment pitch, plan labelled Chambers / over this / room (twice), Sunk two / feet and Oven, note: The Cornice B. must agree / in every respect with / the Cornice A, already executed, closely dimensioned and verso (Baldwin) Mr Dillingham / Plan of Stables with four Elevations
64 (feint pencil note by Soane next to Plan of the Chambers ...) the chimneys marked A A are executed / the Flues cannot be carried thro / the Main Building but must be / carried thro the Roof of the Offices, A. This Window to be placed in the / middle of the end of the Room / B. To correspond with A / CD} Leave flues here, (Soane) The Level of Set off to Mansion House, Level of Ground in Entrance front, Level of Pavement of Area, Level of Kitchen floor, Level of Pavement of Basement Story, labelled Mansion House, Door / into / House, Housekeeper, Store Room, Kitchen, Larder, Scullery, dimensions given, some calculations and, verso (Baldwin) Mr Dillingham / Plan of Offices
65 (Baldwin) Mr Dillingham / Elevation of Offices
66 B.G.Dillingham Esqr
- (60) Feb:y 1786 (63) Feb: 1786 (65 verso) John McDonnell March 30th 1786 (66) (pencil) Margt Street (pen) July 24th 1786
An earlier design for the house including offices and stables is shown on drawings 7 and 8, dated 1783.
The Gurdon Papers (TS transcription by Lord Cramworth from the Gurdon papers in his possession, copy in SM green box files) show that Soane was 'Making designs for the offices' on 13 and 15 February 1786 and 'Making a fair draw[ing] of Offices' on 25 February. On 22 March he was at Letton to 'set out Offices'; things moved quickly once the decision had been made to start building the offices.
P.Dean, op.cit., wrote that 'White brick was used for the 'outer'elevations (matching the house) while cheaper local red brick was used on the inner courtyard elevations and the front facing the stables. These red brick areas are now whitewashed. The east range, facing the stables, with shallow pediments is best preserved, but with considerable alterations to the door and window openings. The single-storey north range was raised in height during the alterations of the nineteenth century, while the south block was entirely reconstructed. Wall and brick piers survive to the yard which was originally brick and pebble paved.
For a note on the design for stables on verso of drawing 65 see following catalogue entry.
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.
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