Revised designs, 26 July 1795 (3)

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Town houses
  - London: 43 Hill Street: alterations and additions for 1st Earl Fortescue, 1793-1795 (6)

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Reference number

SM (4) 39/1/21 (5) 39/1/22 (6) 39/1/23

Purpose

Revised designs, 26 July 1795 (3)

Aspect

4 Plan of the Basement Floor / with the proposed Alterations 5 Plan of the Ground Floor / with the proposed Alterations (verso) unfinished (pencil) plan of basement with cancellation marks 6 Variant Plan of the One pair Floor (i.e. ground floor) / with the proposed Alterations and alternative plan for the chamber

Scale

(4-5) bar scale of 1/10 inch to 1 foot (6 to the same scale)

Inscribed

4 as above, Earl Fortescue, rooms labelled: Servants / Rooms, Cellar, Servants Hall, Housekeeper, Area, Passage, Butler, Area, Covered Passage, Washouse / & / Laundry, The Kitchen, Garden, Stables, Coachouse and dimensions given 5 as above, Earl Fortescue, rooms labelled: Hall, The Eating Room, The Library, Area, Dressing Room, Area, Lead flat, Garden, Stable, Coachouse and dimensions given 6 as above, Earl Fortescue, rooms labelled: Anti Room, Drawing Room, Breakfast Room, Chamber and (alternative design) Chamber and dimensions given

Signed and dated

(4-6) Copy Lincolns Inn Fields July 24 (or 24^th) 1795

Medium and dimensions

(4) Pen, black, sepia and light red washes, pricked for transfer on cartridge paper (506 x 309) (5-6) pen, sepia and light red washes, pricked for transfer on cartridge paper (508 x 305)

Hand

(4-6) Frederick Meyer (1775 - ?, pupil 1791-1796)

Notes

The site of 43 Hill Street was 150 feet deep by 42 feet wide, with a door and three windows to the front elevation. The survey plan of the ground floor (drawing 1) shows the house entered by a hall giving on to the principal stair (straight turn with landing), the front room was the dining room (29 feet by 20 feet 9 inches) with behind it the library (20 feet by 19 feet 6 inches) lit by a small yard. Beyond this was the 'Flatt', 14 to 17 feet deep and the width of the site. "Flatt' or flat denotes a 'flat roof' that had a slight fall to its eaves or guttering and was made of lead (or copper or zinc). The flat covered the offices that, built at basement level, were one storey high. At the end of the garden were a laundry and stables.

Drawings 2 and 3 show the alterations and additions proposed in 1793: a new kitchen and wash-house/laundry added to the back of the house, with new stables at the rear of the garden. Drawing 3 shows the ground floor addition of a bedroom at the back, apparently over the two-storey kitchen (reduced to one storey in drawings 4-5). The single-storey flat-roofed areas are the stables and the laundry as well as the two privies in the garden.

Drawings 4-6 were made two years later. The proposed stables with eight stalls and a coach house are the same as in drawing 2 but the kitchen and laundry are more compactly arranged so that they take up less of the garden. On the ground floor, the proposed stair that was geometrical (drawing 3) is now quarter-turn with landing and the added bedroom has gone (drawing 5) but returns on drawing 6.

Literature

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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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