Designs for ground and first floors of the Board of Trade and Privy Council Offices, June 1824 (6)

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Office of Works
  - London: Board of Trade and Privy Council Offices, Whitehall & Downing Street: designs for new offices and scheme for the improvement of Downing Street, 1823-33 (284)
    - Designs and working drawings for the new Board of Trade and Privy Council Offices, December 1823-October 1824 (106)

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Reference number

SM (54) 50/1/8 (55) 50/1/7 (56) 50/1/42 (57) 50/1/45 (58) 50/1/43 (59) 50/1/44

Purpose

Designs for ground and first floors of the Board of Trade and Privy Council Offices, June 1824 (6)

Aspect

54 Plan of the Ground Floor (as designed)
55 Plan of the One Pair Floor as designed
56 Plan of the Ground Floor of a Design for the New Council Offices
57 Plan of the Principal Floor of a Design for the New Council Offices
58 Plan of the Ground Floor of a Design for the New Council Offices
59 Plan of the Principal Floor of a Design for the New Council Offices

Scale

(54-59) bar scales of 1/6 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

54 as above, New Board of Trade Offices, (in Soane's hand) N^o 1 with the / front decorated / with insulated Col: / The order as at Tivoli, The rooms in this / front to be two feet / wider
55 as above, New Board of Trade Offices
56 as above
57 as above, (verso): Board of Trade &^c
58-59 as above

Signed and dated

(54) Lincolns Inn Fields / 1 June 1824 (56-59) Lincolns Inn Fields / June 1824

Medium and dimensions

(54-59) Pen, pink, sepia (58) and blue washes, pricked for transfer with double ruled and black wash border on wove paper (538 x 742, 538 x 747, 538 x 748, 746 x 537, 531 x 746, 744 x 532)

Hand

Soane office

Watermark

(54-59) Smith & Allnutt 1827 (sic - see notes)

Notes

Drawings 54-59 make three pairs of designs. The entrance hall from Whitehall has an imperial staircase and there is a geometrical staircase at the north end of the Board of Trade Offices. In the Privy Council Offices is an open-newel staircase and a large chamber on the first floor. On drawings 54-57 the columns across the frontage are all detached, but on drawings 58-59 they are all three-quarters engaged. Soane's identification of the columns of 'the order as at Tivoli' foreshadows a dispute with Frederick Robinson about which order should be used.
Although the drawings are dated 'June 1824' and fit into this stage of the design process, they are each watermarked '1827'. It is probable that they are copies of original drawings from June 1824 made for the Select Committee inquiry into the Office of Works conducted in 1828, at which Soane was called to give evidence (see also drawings 89-90).

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.

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