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Reference number

SM volume 109/11

Purpose

[12/7] Copy of a ground plan laid before the House of Commons in March 1735 (1734 Old Style) showing the parts completed and the parts begun or intended to be built, together with the walled enclosure and the immediate surroundings of the river, Greenwich and the Queen's Garden

Aspect

Ground-floor plan and site plan

Scale

100 feet to 2 1/8 inch (vertical scale bar on left side of sheet)

Inscribed

In ink at top right, probably by Richard Biggs, Copy of the Plan / laid before the House / of Commons. / Witness Rich : Biggs, and below by Thomas Ripley, Laid before ye House March ye 6 th 1734 / Tho. Ripley; and with numbered scale bar; and at top right (of volume) in C19 hand, 11

Signed and dated

  • Undated, but datable shortly before March 1735, when the plan was laid before the House of Commons

Medium and dimensions

Pen and grey ink, with grey, red and yellow washes; brown ink line across top and bottom of sheet, on laid paper with central fold, torn in bottom half and repaired with backing paper (2006). 512 x 705.

Hand

Unidentified draughtsman in Thomas Ripley's office

Watermark

Strasbourg Lily / 4WR; countermark: IV

Notes

The date 1734 must be Old Style and therefore refers to the year 1735. At this late date, it was still proposed to replicate the west range of King William's Court on the east side of Queen Mary's Court, although not in every detail as the applied portico has much smaller columns. The plan presumably reflects the decision taken by the directors in 1732 to complete the Hospital 'according to the Original Design, and in the most frugal manner'. Unlike [12/6], the plan does not provide for an infirmary, nor is there a reference to the use of an adjoining site to the west for that purpose (as on NMM ART 3/4; see Bold 2000, fig. 207). As on all other plans from this period, pairs of square pavilions are included in the rear courtyard areas of each main court, here set close to the proposed new boundary wall. The two pavilions behind King Charles Court and the southern one behind Queen Anne Court are shaded in grey wash, indicating built structures, whereas the rest are in red wash. The same distinction in shading is used for pavilions on NMM ART 3/4.

Literature

Wren Society, VI, pl. 16, top

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).