Design for an addition, 19 August 1788

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Country houses, etc.
  - Kelshall, Hertfordshire: (not as executed) addition for the Revd Mr Waddington, 1788

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Reference number

SM 29/4A/2

Purpose

Design for an addition, 19 August 1788

Aspect

First floor plan; (verso) see Notes below

Scale

bar scale of 2/9 inch to 1 foot, approximately

Inscribed

N^o3, Plan of Bed Chamber Floor, Bed Chamber / 20 feet by 17 feet (twice), Bed Chamber (three times), Servants Chamber, The Rev^dM^rWaddington, Kelsham, N.B. For drawing of "Gunthorpe" see other side

Signed and dated

Copy Welbeck Street August 19 1788

Medium and dimensions

Pencil, pen and black, yellow and pink washes on laid paper with three fold marks (574 x 467)

Hand

Soane office

Watermark

J Whatman, fleur-de-lis above cartouche with bar and below, ornate W

Notes

Soane proposed a variety of designs for Kelshall Rectory. This preliminary design was made two weeks after Soane first visited the property and was not chosen by the client. The executed design was more substantial, spanning the long side of the house and covering two floors.

Soane first visited Kelshall Rectory on 5 August 1788. On 20 August, he sent to Mr Waddington four alternative designs for an addition. This drawing is a copy of design 'N^o3', proposing a timber addition with two bedrooms and a staircase. Estimates were made but none of the designs were approved. Soane subsequently made designs for a new house, sending proposals to Mr Waddington on 14 September. In November and December, he made further designs for an addition and sent them to the client. The building was completed by July 1789, when Soane was paid his commission of £20. Assuming Soane charged his usual rate of 5%, the building works must have cost £400.

The house still exists today and is relatively unchanged (P. Dean).

For the verso of this drawing, see Gunthorpe Hall, Norfolk: designs for a new house for the Revd Charles Collyer, 1789-90 (10), drawing 1 (q.v.).

Soane's Journal N^o1 records that John Sanders (pupil 1784-90), Robert Woodgate (clerk 1788-94) and John McDonnnell (1786-91) made drawings for Kelshall in August 1788.

Madeleine Helmer, 2011

Literature

P. Dean, Sir John Soane and the Country Estate, 1999, p. 177.

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.

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