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Reference number

SM 9/1/15

Purpose

[3] Engraved plan for street improvements proposed by the Corporation of the City of London to George Dance's designs, with alterations and notes by Soane, 1803

Aspect

Plan for Improvements Proposed / By the Hon. Corporation of London Between the Royal Exchange and / Finsbury Square

Scale

bar scale

Inscribed

as above, The principal improvements proposed by this Plan / are as follows, viz // The removal of Bedlam Hospital to a more healthy / situation without the Town, the present building / being found unfit to stand. // The erection of an Amphitheatrical Area 500 / by 400 Feet, on Quarters of Moorfields / including the scite which the Hospital of / Bedlam now occupies, and would admit / of upwards of Sixty Houses fit for the habi- / tation of opulent Citizens, with Gardens, / Coach houses & stables, annexed. The whole / connected with the most interesting part of / the City, by a new Street 80 feet wide leading / directly from the Amphitheatre to the Royal / Exchange.
Plan superimposed in pencil with a numbered grid, and in upper left corner in feint pencil illegible inscription that includes by 60 sold to

Signed and dated

  • John Soane / 1803 and Engraved by John Cooke, Engraver to the Hon. Board of Admiralty

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil and coloured washes, on wove paper (548 x 435)

Hand

Soane and engraver John Cooke

Notes

This drawing, SM 9/1/13 and SM 9/1/14 are all plans of George Dance's proposed improvements as Clerk of the City Works. Dance (1741-1825) was responsible for the development of Finsbury Square (from 1777), shown in this set of drawings, and the design for Finsbury Circus, also shown here labelled as the 'London Amphitheatre' (designed 1802 and executed by William Mountague (1773-1843, from 1814, City Surveyor) in c. 1815). Moorgate Street was not constructed as shown until the 1830s. New Street shown in the drawing was not constructed. In the drawing the north-west corner of the Bank has been shaded in pen by Soane.

For Dance's design for Finsbury Square for the Corporation of London, dated 1783 and 1789 see J.Lever, Catalogue of the drawings of George Dance the Younger ...from the Collection of Sir John Soane's Museum, 2003, [37]1-2, pp.130-2 (SM D4/6/4-5).

Literature

H.Colvin, Biographical dictionary of British architects, 1600-1840, 4th ed., 2008

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).