Survey drawings of the new Privy Council Chamber, September 1827 (3)

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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 for the new government buildings on Whitehall and the completion of Downing Street with a Triumphal Arch, December 1825-May 1833 (100)

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Reference number

SM (251) 49/1/39 (252) 49/1/38 (253) 49/1/40

Purpose

Survey drawings of the new Privy Council Chamber, September 1827 (3)

Aspect

251 Plan of the New Council Chamber &^c in Downing Street with plan of the old Council Chamber on flier
252 Plan of the New Council Chamber &^c in Downing Street with Plan of the Temporary Council Chamber / in Whitehall Place on flier
253 Plan of the New Council Chamber &^c in Downing Street with plan of the temporary Council Chamber overlaid

Scale

(251-253) bar scales of 3/8 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

251 as above, labelled: Note. The Red Lines shew ^^{Small Plan attached to this shews} the outline of the Old Council Chamber or Cock Pit, Ante-Room, Downing Street
252 as above
253 as above, labelled: Note. The Red Lines shew the outline of the Temporary Council Chamber / in Whitehall Place together with the Tables &^c, Ante Room, Ch[imne]^y(5 times), Table (3 times), Downing Street

Signed and dated

(251) Lincolns Inn Fields / 15 Sep^r 1827 (252) Sep^r 1827 (253) Lincolns Inn Fields 15 Sep^r 1827

Medium and dimensions

(251, 252) Pen, grey, yellow ochre, pink, black, burnt umber and raw Sienna washes, pricked for transfer with triple ruled, grey and black wash border on wove paper with a flier on wove paper, affixed (724 x 520, 727 x 525) (253) pen, grey and pink washes, pricked for transfer with triple ruled, grey and black wash border on wove paper (725 x 522)

Hand

(251-253) Stephen Burchell (1806-?, pupil 1823-28)

Watermark

(251-253) Smith & Allnutt 1823

Notes

In September 1827 the Privy Council asked Soane to remove the eight Ionic columns from the Council Chamber, 'their Lordships being of opinion that these Columns interfere with the Arrangements which will be necessary for the transaction of Business in that Apartment' (Charles Greville, Clerk to the Council, 6 September 1827, quoted in King's Works, p. 558, n. 6). It is perhaps in response to this request that drawings 251-253 were produced. Drawing 251 has a flier with a plan of the old Council Chamber (q.v. drawing 150) affixed while the flier affixed to drawing 252 shows a plan of the temporary Council Chamber in Whitehall Place (q.v. drawings 247-248) and drawing 253 is overlaid with the same plan (in pink wash). The fliers are affixed directly over plans of the new Privy Council Chamber, suggesting a comparison of the old and temporary rooms with the new Council Chamber. The effect is to clearly demonstrate the greater size of the new Council Chamber, although Soane's misleading inclusion of the ante-room in the plans does exaggerate this effect.
It was eventually decided to retain the columns for the time being, although Soane was chastised for his failure to produce sufficient plans at the design stage (see scheme note).

Level

Drawing

Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation

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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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