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Signed and dated
- Lincolns Inn Fields / 10 April 1830 and J. S. (John Soane) / 26 May 1830
Hand
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Notes
Thereafter the 'Specification' is divided into the following sections containing instructions for different parts of the premises:
p. 6) 'New entrance doorway to the bank'
p. 7) 'New buildings'
p. 10) 'Window linings &c'
p. 10) 'Door linings'
p. 10) 'Doors'
p. 10) 'Skirting'
p. 11) 'Hall'
p. 11) 'Lobby to servants hall'
p. 12) 'Kitchen &c'
p. 12) 'Scullery'
p. 12) 'Pantry &c'
p. 13) 'Knife house, servants water closet &c'
p. 13) 'Lobby adjoining scullery'
p. 14) 'Servants bed chambers'
p. 15) 'Stable'
p. 16) 'Loft'
p. 16) 'Coach house &c'
p. 16) 'Back entrance doorway'
p. 17) 'Clerks water closet, sink &c'
p. 18) 'Porters room'
p. 19) 'Agents water closet'
p. 20) 'Passage'
p. 20) 'Agents private room'
p. 21) 'Bank'
p. 22) 'Lobby at entrance to bank'
p. 29) 'One pair back bed chamber'
p. 29) 'Water closet'
p. 30) 'Two pair floor'
References to relevant drawings (catalogued below, drawings 57-84) are made throughout, for example, 'two inch deal four pannel doors, moulded both sides (as shewn in drawing no. 10)' (p. 10) and 'sash frame, sashes, shutters, linings and iron guards, see drawing no. 12'.
Several more general instructions are given, for example 'the whole of the ceilings of the several new rooms, passages, lobbies, water closets and staircase, and likewise the strings of stairs, excepting only the ceilings of the coach house, stable, hay loft and coal house, to be of lath & plaster, floated & set and whited' (p. 26).
Further instructions are laid out on pages 31 and 32: 'the contractor must likewise provide and fix proper & sufficient hoards to enclose the back of the premises during the progress of the works and reinstate such of the paving in Chancery Lane as may be disturbed by the alteration of the building. No old materials to be used in any part of the work excepting those particularly directed in this specification. The contractor to state the time by which he will engage that the whole of the works shall be completed.'
The 'Specification' is initialled and dated '10 April 1830' (the date on which it was sent along with 12 drawings to John Reid, the agent of the Manchester branch bank from 1828), and 'J.S. 26 May 1830' (the date on which Thomas Heath was instructed to go and superintend the work at Manchester).
Level
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).