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  • image SM 10/3/1
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Reference number

SM 10/3/1

Purpose

[68] Design of the offices between Lothbury Court and the Bullion Court, 21 February 1799

Aspect

Plan indicating the existing buildings in black and the proposed building works in light red, showing offices with curving interiors; (Soane) alterations to the design, including a second Secretary's office and a Strong Closet, a chimney-piece in The Secretary's Office, a variation in the corridor leading to the Bullion Court, a Strong Clo[set] off the Deputy Accountant's Office, columnal variations in the Accountant General's Office and the Residence Court (Office Court), a chimney-piece in the Interior Office for the Consols

Scale

bar scale

Inscribed

as above, The Bank of England, Lothbury Quadrangle, Vestibule, Lobby, Water / Closet, Watch / Box, Iron Gate, Open, 3 pr Cent Consols, water, Bullion Offices, Secretary, Strong Closet, Dep:? / Accountant Generals / Room, Closet, Court, Mr Edward's / present Room and some dimensions given

Signed and dated

  • Lincolns Inn Fields Febry 21. 1799

Hand

Soane and Soane office

Notes

The north-east extension had to fit into an irregular parcel of land between the streets and the existing Bank. The existing buildings were directed at a different angle from Lothbury Street and so the joining of the two sides was not easy. The rectangular Lothbury Court gave a semblance of order to the interior. The offices, on the other hand, were awkward shapes. As shown in SM 9/4/31, SM 9/4/30 and SM volume 60/15, the offices were polygons at first but Soane eventually curved the corners and ends of these rooms, therby masking their unusual shapes and angles. This drawing shows slight refinements to the plan in Soane's hand, including another Secretary's office and strong closets in some of the offices. In the corridor leading from Lothbury Court to the Bullion Court, a turn was included at the recommendation of one of the Bank's directors, Mr Dea, to inable a direct view from the outside to the Bullion Court. This suggestion was made in October 1797 but it was eventually dropped in favour of a straight approach.

Level

Drawing

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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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