Inscribed
as above, The Safe is placed in a Strong Room / with a wr[ough]t Iron Door & Frame / thereto and two of Bramahs / Locks, of different suits / are affixed thereto // When the Iron Safe was about to be / made for the Swansea Branch it / was ascertained that the Strong Room / in which it was to be placed was / not sufficiently long to admit of / the Safe opening at both ends / as on the Plan that had been adopted at Gloucester / and it likewise conceived that from the depth of the / Room it would be more convenient / if the the Doors were made to open / folding instead of in one & accordingly it / was made so; On the one Door there --- --- / is a spring latch shooting two / Slingbolts into the top upper and / bottom of the safe on the and as / the other Door are two of Bram[ahs] / Patent Locks of different suits / shooting two bolts each into the / strong upright bolt of the Latch // This safe was considered to be perfectly / satisfact[or]y by the Agent at the / time it was made and an / ---------- (illegible) object has since been made to / it // when it was first / used, and // it was consequently / directed to be made / to open in front only / instead of the two / ends.
Medium and dimensions
Pen on laid secretary paper with four fold marks (323 x 201)
Hand
Soane office
Watermark
Britannia holding lance, shield and olive branch within crowned oval
Notes
Mention of the safe at the Gloucester branch bank reveals that plans and ideas were consulted and adapted to suit other branch banks where appropriate.
Level
Drawing
Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation
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
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