[4] Survey of the theatre, one overlaid with preliminary design, datable to 13 October 1790

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Public buildings
  - London: King's Theatre (Opera House): designs for an opera house, c.1790 (9)

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Reference number

SM 61/5/8

Purpose

[4] Survey of the theatre, one overlaid with preliminary design, datable to 13 October 1790

Aspect

Plan of the King's Theatre in the Haymarket

Scale

bar scale of 3/20 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

as above, Plan N^_o 2 / The lines shaded with Red are the different Walls of the new / Building // The space colored Blue is M^rDayrell's Property, Haymarkett, White horse yard, Markett Lane, Union Court, Scene Room, Dressing Room (twice), Dressing / Room (twice), Coffee Room, Old Stage 54 feet, New Stage, door, opening at the end of the stage, door, calculations amounting to £135:2, Per Lease 144- // per meas^ts135.2// 8:10, (pencil) door, door,

Signed and dated

datable to 13 October 1790

Medium and dimensions

Pencil, pen and grey, black, blue and yellow washes, on laid paper (682 x 556)

Hand

Soane office, with title added later by George Bailey (Soane Museum curator, 1837-60)

Notes

Soane's Journal N^o1 records that on 9 October Chawner took a plan of the old opera house to Mr O'Reilly, and on 13 October he left at Mr Withams's house a drawing of the old opera house 'with the outline of the new one shewn upon it'. This drawing and SM 61/5/7 correspond to these entries, showing surveys of the old opera and one overlaid with a new design in pink wash (this drawing). The 'old opera' corresponds with Novoskielski's design on SM 61/5/9. The new opera is much wider and occupies the adjoining site to the south purchased in June 1790 (SM 61/5/2).

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).