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Survey plan of St James's Park, including St James's Palace and Whitehall Palace
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Reference number
SM drawer 62/1/1
Purpose
Survey plan of St James's Park, including St James's Palace and Whitehall Palace
Aspect
Plan
Scale
10 feet to 1/16 inch (i.e. 100 feet to 5/8 inch) (prick-marked scale, at top left)
Inscribed
In pencil, on lower right, in a C18-19 hand, An Old Plan of St James's Palace (repeated below left, but erased, and with erased pencil inscriptions by Arthur Bolton to right); and in pencil at bottom right corner, 30
Signed and dated
- c.1726-c.1731
Medium and dimensions
Pen and grey ink with light pink and light blue washes, over pencil under drawing, with a pencil-sketching on left, extensively pricked through for transfer; on laid paper, with C19 wove paper reinforcements on the verso, that on the left side (recto) extended to form gutter in former bound volume; 538 x 755.
Hand
Unidentified
Watermark
Strasbourg Lily / LVG = IHS / IVILLEDARY
Notes
The survey can be dated between the completion of St Martin-in-the-Fields (shown with its portico and the sloping line of the front steps, executed by then, bottom left) and the start of work on the Great Stable of the Royal Mews (1731-33) on the axis of St Martin's at the south end of the Great Mews Courtyard (see The History of the King's Works, vol. V, 1976, fig. 12 and pp. 212-13). Over the site of Whitehall Palace, including the Banqueting House, has been sketched in pencil an outline block plan for a large new building on an H-plan, the centre of its long west side (the right-hand leg of the H) overlapping the east end of the canal in St James's Park. It does not relate to any of the rebuilding schemes drawn by Hawksmoor soon after the fire in January 1698 and may therefore be an unrecorded scheme (perhaps also by Hawksmoor) for rebuilding the palace early in the reign of George II. The Banqueting House would have stood at the lower left-hand corner of the bar of the H (presumably retained rather than demolished).
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