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  • image SM 33/1/22
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Reference number

SM 33/1/22

Purpose

[9] Presentation drawing of a preliminary design, 2 and 12 April 1790

Aspect

Plan of the Attic Floor

Scale

bar scale of 1/5 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

(Upper case) as above, The Marquiss of Buckingham, plan labelled (Soane): Chamber (seven times), Skylight over the Great Staircase, Corridor, Arch (nine times), Corridor, Door sashed / as the windows, Nursery Apartments, The Nursery Apartments, Second / or / common Staircase, lettered A corresponding to A These steps are not essentially requisite, (pencil, Soane) door, chy, (feint pencil, Soane) ----- / 3--- wide / & - deep, 12 [feet] 10 [inches], 15 [feet] 3 [inches]

Signed and dated

  • (6-7, 9) John Soane Archt Albion Place April 2d 1790 (8) Albion Place April 12th 1790

Medium and dimensions

Pen and black and pink washes, pencil, within double-ruled and wash border on laid paper (496 x 710)

Hand

attributed to Thomas Chawner (1774-1851, pupil 1788-94) and Soane

Watermark

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

Notes

As in earlier designs (drawings 4 and 5 (SM 33/1/2 and SM 33/1/3)), the west building is completely replaced while much of the east structure has been retained. The three bays of the east building are replicated in the proposed west range. Unfortunately, the front door is not at the exact centre of the front elevation because of the existing party wall. Instead of altering this (probably essential) structural wall so that a door may fit, Soane proposes finishing the frontispiece so that the 'hall door will appear regular in the Front'.

This attic floor plan has seven bedrooms of varying dimensions arranged around the central stairwell and accessed by narrow corridors. Quarter-stairs reconcile a difference in floor levels between the east and west sides of the house (as in drawings 4 and 5 (SM 33/1/2 and SM 33/1/3)). Two large rooms at the west end are reserved for the nursery apartments. The south-facing nursery has three windows overlooking a roof that covers the first floor bay window. Erasure marks show that the chimney-piece in one nursery has been altered, as in the 'second drawing room' chimney-piece directly underneath. Soane's pencil alterations to the drawing include a door between this north-west nursery and the adjacent bedroom. He has also added a chimney-piece to the bedroom adjacent to the other nursery.

Literature

Country House Lighting: 1660-1890, Temple Newsam Country House Studies, No. 4, Leeds City Art Galleries, 1992, pp. 73-77.

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).