Variant designs for front elevations, neither as executed, 30 December 1789 (2)

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Town houses
  - Reading, Berkshire: Seven Bridges Street now Bridge Street: brewery for William Blackall Simonds, 1789-1790; house for Mr Simonds fronting the brewery, 1789; additions and alterations to the original house, 1802-1803 (34)

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Reference number

SM (4) 2/6/4 (5) 2/6/5

Purpose

Variant designs for front elevations, neither as executed, 30 December 1789 (2)

Aspect

4-5 Elevation Next The Road / N^oI and Elevation Next The Road / N^o II

Scale

4-5 bar scale of approximately ¼ inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

4 as above, W.B.Simonds Esq^r NB. This Elevation will suit either of the Plans (see Notes) 5 as above and W.B.Simonds Esq^r

Signed and dated

4 Copy December 30^th1789
5 Copy Dec^r30^th1789

Medium and dimensions

4-5 Pen, black, light grey and light blue washes, shaded, on laid paper (446 x 590)

Hand

4-5 John McDonnell (pupil 1786-1791)

Watermark

4-5 J Whatman, fleur-de-lis on cartouche with bar, and ornate W below

Notes

Both designs are for a house three bays wide and of two storeys with an attic over a raised basement and with service entrances on either side. Design I is astylar while design II has four pilasters with an invented leafy Ionic capital. Both designs have three-part Wyatt windows, design II in a 'stripped' version of design I with its mouldings and a wreath over the door.
Soane borrowed from his initial design for the front elevation of Saxlingham Rectory, Norfolk, 1784 (q.v.) for the composition and window details of design II (and see also note to drawing 3).
The accompanying plans have not survived but there are survey plans and an elevation made 13 years later (drawings 6-10). See drawing 3 for a perspective close to drawing 2 except that a) the service entrances have gone (b) the eaves cornice has migrated to below the attic windows and (c) the order is now a conventional Ionic. A circa 1900 photograph (SM Information Files) of the three-bay house heavily clad with wisteria and ivy shows it in use as an office. Built of brick with Ionic pilasters and a cornice with T-shaped toothing below the attic. There is also a wreath above the door that is probably the tablet with carving of hops and hop leaves ordered from Foxhall in 1791.

Soane's office 'Ledger B' has an entry for 27 February 1792 that records payments for slates, white bricks, stone, Sealy for artificial stone and composition ornaments, as well as Foxhall and Hall for paper-hanging suggesting that the house was built and finished by that date. Two patterns of paper bordered with hops were sent by post in 1791

Level

Drawing

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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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