[210] Record (design) drawing, 24 June 1818

Explore Collections

You are here: CollectionsOnline / [210] Record (design) drawing, 24 June 1818

Browse

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)
    - Secretary's Offices, 30 March - 24 June 1818 (9)

Use of images and copyright
Enlarge this Image

Print this image in A4 view

Reference number

SM67/2/17

Purpose

[210] Record (design) drawing, 24 June 1818

Aspect

Half-Elevation with section of roof of the Secretary's new office / Chelsea Hospital (west front)

Scale

bar scale

Inscribed

as above and some dimensions given

Signed and dated

24^th June 1818

Hand

Soane office

Notes

This drawing shows the Secretary's Offices almost as built, though the roof is incomplete and the structure of the timbers can be seen. The four chimneys of the central Secretary's building have yet to be added as has the skylight (which was only added in 1821 to provide natural lighting for George Jones' painting of the Battle of Waterloo, hung in the vestibule). However, two drawings at the National Archives - (PRO) Work 31/236 and Work 31/237 - show the design with a skylight and the latter design is dated 5 March 1818. Thus a skylight may always have been in Soane's mind as a possibility for this building.

Although the central section of building is only one storey high, the addition of incised blind panels above the windows articulates the facade and allowed Soane to create a taller interior and experiment with a vestibule having three different floor-to-ceiling heights.

The drawing shows a brick building, with stone quoining at the corners, rubbed red brick window surrounds and a grey slate, hipped roof. All these details are in sympathy with Wren's style (particularly because of the two Wren buildings on either side of the Secretary's new Offices, which would eventually be connected by low link buildings). Margaret Richardson and Ptolemy Dean have both noted that, by this point, Soane's architecture had come under criticism from George Soane's article in The Champion (and elsewhere) and as a result the Board of Commissioners had requested Soane to design in accordance with Wren's style.

Literature

P. Dean, 'The Royal Hospital Chelsea II - life after 1815' in Sir John Soane and London, 2006, p.74
M. Richardson, 'Soane in Chelsea', pp.45-51 The Chelsea Society Report, 1992, pp.45-46

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).