Survey drawings of Mr Simonds's house, December 1802 (5)

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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 (6) 2/6/28 (7) 2/6/29 (8) 2/6/30 (9)2/6/8 (10) 2/6/19

Purpose

Survey drawings of Mr Simonds's house, December 1802 (5)

Aspect

6 General Plan of house and Garden with plan of front wall of Store House 7 Plan of the Basement Story 8 Plan of the Chamber Floor and Plan of the Attic Floor 9 Elevation of the Front next the Road 10 Plan of the Bedchamber Floor

Scale

(6) bar scale of 1/7 inch to 1 foot (7-8) bar scales of 2¼ inches to 10 feet (9) bar scale of 1/7 inch to 1 foot (10) 1/3 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

6 as above, W.B.Simonds Esq^rReading, labelled Drying Ground, Well, Store House, Cartway, Gate, Vestibule, Eating Room, Store Room, Office, Passage, Butlers / Pantry, Larder, Kitchen, Scullery, Drawing Room, (garden) Privy and dimensions given 7 as above,W.B.Simonds Esq^rReading, labelled Wine Cellar and dimensions given 8 as above, W.B.Simonds Esq^rReading, labelled Bed Chamber (four times), Servants Room, (attic) Closet (twice) and dimensions given 9 as above, W.B.Simonds Esq^r, Elevation of the Front and the Road, Store House and dimensions given 10 as above, W^m B.Simonds Esqr this Chimney is lower than the Chimney B / and therefore will have a sufficient / Substance at the back of it and dimensions given

Signed and dated

(6) Dec^r 4^th1802 (7) Dec^r 4^th1802 (8) Dec^r1802 (9) Dec^r31 1802 (10) Copy 5 March (corner missing)

Medium and dimensions

(6-8) Pen and sepia wash, pricked for transfer on thin laid paper (564 x 672, 334 x 562, 676 x 555) (9) pen and sepia wash, shaded, pricked for transfer on thin laid paper (534 x 680) (10) pen , sepia, light red and yellow washes, pricked for transfer on coarse laid paper (675 x 560) (6, 8-10 some corners repaired)

Hand

(6-9) Richard Williams (clerk July 1789-July 1803) (10) Soane office

Notes

Soane's office 'Ledger D' has an entry dated 30 November 1802 of 'Clerk's time and Travelling Expenses to take / Plans of the Premises to enable me to make / out Designs for the additional / Building'. The clerk may have been Richard Williams (in the office July 1789-July 1803) the only clerk at that time. Drawings 6-9, were made in December 1802 while drawing 10 (copy of chamber plan) is dated '5 March' and the year is missing. To a different scale, on a different type of drawing paper and with coloured washes it does not form a 'set' with 6-9 but it is closer to drawing 8 than to later drawings.
The 'General Plan' shows the house and its offices, garden, boundary walls and part of the brewery store house but not the brewery buildings behind the house. The site is about 150 feet wide and the house was set back nearly 60 feet from the road (Seven Bridges Street). Apparently the Soane office did not have a record set of plans for the house and thus the need for a survey.
The house has two wings projecting at the back, one contains part of Mr Simmond's office with a nearby entrance, and the other forms part of the breakfast room. Behind the three-bay front is a central entrance vestibule and stair and there is a shallow bow to the dining room. The chamber floor has a nursery and four bedrooms, the attic has three more bedrooms. Quadrant screen walls on either side of the front conceal but also permit entrance to the attached, single-storey domestic offices to the left, and to the brewery buildings to the rear of the house. The front elevation corresponds with that of drawing 3 which does not, however, show the offices and screen walls.

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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