[3] Presentation drawing showing a preliminary alternative design for alterations to the chapel, 26 April 1788

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
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  - Wardour Castle, Wiltshire: (executed) extension to a chapel for 8th Lord Arundell of Wardour, 1788 (30)

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Reference number

SM 47/2/53

Purpose

[3] Presentation drawing showing a preliminary alternative design for alterations to the chapel, 26 April 1788

Aspect

Plan with laid out elevations of design N^o 2

Scale

bar scale of 1/11 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

as above, The Right Hon^bleLord Arundell, Design for the alteration of the Chapel, The Chapel / at / Wardour Castle, Tribune (twice)

Signed and dated

26 April 1788
Welbeck Street April 26: 1788

Medium and dimensions

Pencil, pen and grey, blue and black washes within double-ruled and wash border on laid paper with one fold mark (585 x 470)

Hand

John Sanders (pupil 1784-90)

Watermark

J Whatman and fleur-de-lis over cartouche with ornate W below

Notes

Soane visited the chapel in early April and the office worked on drawings for the building from 12 to 26 April. This drawing and SM 47/2/52, dated 26 April, appear to be the culmination of these preliminary designs and the finished manner of these drawings indicates that they were probably shown to the client.

The chapel has a nave measuring approximately 44 by 30 feet, with semicircular ends each on a radius of 14 feet 5 1/4 inches. An enriched entablature surrounds the nave. The apsidal west end (ritually west) has an organ gallery supported on four Ionic columns. Corinthian columns on a larger radius are attached at four corners of the nave and the walls are articulated by giant fluted Corinthian pilasters. The elaborate ceiling has delicate classical stucco work and is punctured at regular intervals by semicircular clerestory windows.

This design (N^o2) has alterations in grey wash. Soane proposes adding curving 'tribunes' to the east end (ritually east) of the chapel, thus expanding the radius of the external wall. Ionic columns support galleries overhead, both displaying the same iron balustrade motif as SM 47/2/52.

Soane's design shows a minimal intervention within the existing building, adapting to the chapel's orders, ornament, and rhythm of its plan.

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.

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