[129] Record drawing, 15 July 1818

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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)
    - Stables, October 1814 - July 1818 (25)

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Reference number

SM 67/1/7

Purpose

[129] Record drawing, 15 July 1818

Aspect

Plan of the New Stables (built 1814 to 1818), Chelsea Hospital

Scale

bar scale

Inscribed

as above, labelled Stable Yard, The Governor's Stable, The Lieut[enant] Governor's Stable., Entrance, Paradise Row and some dimensions given

Signed and dated

15^thJuly 1818

Hand

Soane office

Notes

This plan (on which North is to the right, South to the left, West at the top of the sheet and East at the bottom) shows a simple structure around a courtyard, closed on four sides unlike the earlier building which only occupied three sides. One main entrance for horses and coaches is shown and one for pedestrians, opposite.

The drawing shows the stables to include at least 26 stalls and nine coach-houses. Coach houses are all indicated by the large arched double doors - two on the south side, probably intended for the governor's coaches, as the stalls to either side are labelled 'The Governor's Stable'.

Some of the smaller rooms around the courtyard must have been stores for harness, saddles, oats and so on. The grooms' and other staff rooms must have been housed above.

The north-west corner room is probably a 'loose box' or 'observation box'. An exterior elevation (SM 67/1/10) shows a lunette window placed high (for light and ventilation) and the plan indicates an adjacent walled space open to the sky, with one entrance and two windows (for observation and further ventilation). Loose boxes in country house stables were only introduced c.1800 and as Giles Worsely indicates 'The loose box was especially favoured for sick horses and horses in foal, and for horses that took violent exercise in relatively short and concentrated periods, followed by periods of idleness, in particular racehorses and hunters'. Towards the south-west corner is a privy with, next to it, an enclosed area, 12 feet 3 inches by 10 feet, open to the sky.

Literature

G. Worsley, The British Stable, 2004, pp. 185-8

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).