[24] Record drawing of the partly demolished Whitsters' residence, 12 April 1809

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Public buildings
  - London: Royal Hospital, Chelsea for the Board of Commissioners, 1807-1835 (226)
    - House for the Whitster and Gordon House (designed by Thomas Leverton), April 1809 - February 1818 (13)

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Reference number

SM volume 78/5

Purpose

[24] Record drawing of the partly demolished Whitsters' residence, 12 April 1809

Aspect

Elevation of the south side of the Whitster's Dwelling with plan outline

Inscribed

some dimensions given

Notes

This group of record drawings was probably included in the report that Soane made to the Board of Commissioners at Chelsea in April 1809. Soane wrote in his report that 'a part of the building which had been in the possession of Lord Yarborough, adjoining the Whitster's dwelling, has since the last Board day been pulled down without any previous notice whatever being given, and with an inattention almost without example, injurious to the building, and destructive of that regularity and symmetry for which this great national Institution has hitherto been celebrated'.

The Whitster's dwelling was partly demolished, without Soane's consent, in order to provide space for Colonel Gordon's new villa. The record drawings pre-date any major design work at Chelsea and Soane probably had little besides repairs to do with this building. Soane was eventually to build a new Whitster's residence and washouse after 1815. There are no designs for this project within the Soane Museum collection but the building remains in situ today, between Soane's Bakehouse and Gardener's House, along the West Road.

'Whitster' is an abbreviation for 'whitester', that is, someone who washes and bleaches white garments and linen.

Literature

Papers, presented to the House of Commons, relating to the Building of a New Infirmary, and the Leasing of Ground at Chelsea Hospital (ordered by the House of Commons) to be Printed, 20^th April 1809
P. Dean, 'The Royal Hospital Chelsea I- Pre-1815' in Sir John Soane and London, 2006, p.68

Level

Drawing

Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation

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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.

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).