Survey drawings of the Old Jewry Presbyterian Meeting House, April 1809 (2)

Explore Collections

You are here: CollectionsOnline / Survey drawings of the Old Jewry Presbyterian Meeting House, April 1809 (2)

Browse

Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Bank of England
  - London: New Bank Buildings, Princes Street, City of London, 1807-10 (115)

Use of images and copyright
Enlarge this Image

Print this image in A4 view

Reference number

SM (46) 11/3/14 (47) 11/3/15

Purpose

Survey drawings of the Old Jewry Presbyterian Meeting House, April 1809 (2)

Aspect

46 Ground floor plan of Part of the Five New Houses in Princes Street forming "New Bank Buildings" and the Meeting House in Old Jewry 47 Ground floor plan of part of the new houses and the Presbyterian Meeting House in Old Jewry

Scale

(46, 47) bar scales of 1/8 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

46 as above, labelled: The Bank of England, Communication from Old Jewry to the back Offices of the five new Houses, 29, 71; (verso): Plan of the Meeting House / Old Jewry 47 labelled: "Meeting House Court", The Old Jewry and some dimensions given

Signed and dated

(46) April 1809 (47) Bank April 12 1809

Medium and dimensions

(46) Pen and pencil, pricked for transfer on wove paper with one fold mark (562 x 677) (47) pen, sepia and pink washes, pricked for transfer on wove paper with one fold mark (566 x 692)

Hand

(46) Robert Dennis Chantrell (1793-1872, pupil 1807-14) (47) George Bailey (1792-1860, pupil then assistant 1806-37, curator 1837-60)

Notes

The Armourers' and Brasiers' Company offered to sell their estate in Old Jewry to the Bank in April 1808. However, the purchase of the buildings was not completed until November 1809. 'The property thus acquired by the Bank consisted of a "great building" known as the "Old Jewry Meeting House"; three other houses fronting Old Jewry, and a house converted into thirteen rooms inhabited by poor persons' (Acres, The Bank of England from Within, volume 2, 1931, pp. 403-4). The Ministers and Managers of the Meeting House had realized that they would be ejected at the end of their lease in 1810, and so in August 1807 had asked the Bank to provide them with some ground in Princes Street on which to build a new Meeting House. This request was denied, and the 'poor persons' were evicted in the summer of 1809. Walter Wilson, writing in 1808, described the Meeting House and its tenants:

'The meeting-house in the Old Jewry is a large, substantial brick-building, neatly fitted up with pews, and contains three galleries of considerable size. The church and congregation, till the death of Dr. Chandler [1766], were very large and wealthy: under Dr. Amory they declined considerably, but have been revived by the present pastor; and are at present, for numbers and influence, among the most respectable of the Presbyterian denomination. As the lease of this meeting-house is upon the point of expiring, and the people have not been able to obtain a renewal upon terms any way to their advantage, they have taken a piece of ground in Jewin-street, where they are building a new meeting-house, nearly opposite to the spot where, upwards of a century ago, their forefathers assembled for divine worship. This circumstance has been considered to be not a little remarkable. The old place, we understand, is to be shut up in the month of June, and, the new one opened in the course of the ensuing autumn. The foundation-stone of the latter place was laid by Dr. Rees, on the 5th of September, 1808' (Wilson, op. cit. below, pp. 304-5).

The Bank ordered in March 1810 that part of the Meeting House be demolished 'in order to complete the new houses' (Acres, op. cit. above).

Literature

W. Wilson, The History and Antiquities of Dissenting Churches and Meeting Houses in London, Westminster and Southwark..., volume 2, 1808, pp. 302-400; W. Marston Acres, The Bank of England from Within, volume 2, 1931, pp. 403-4.

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).