[52-60] Rough sketch designs for a new House of Lords, 25 July 1794 (9)

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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: Palace of Westminster: designs for alterations and additions, 1793-1828 (499)
    - London: House of Lords, Palace of Westminster: official (mostly domeless) designs, July 1794 - February 1795 (134)

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Reference number

SM (52) 16/4/1 (53) 16/4/2 (54) 16/4/3 (55) 16/4/4 (56) 16/4/5 (57) 16/4/6 (58) 16/4/7 (59) 16/4/8 (60) 16/4/9

Purpose

[52-60] Rough sketch designs for a new House of Lords, 25 July 1794 (9)

Aspect

52 Flank Elevation / N^o 1
53 Front next the River
54 N^o2 Flank (?) Block and elevation next River
55 N^o2 Elevation next River and detail of attic
56 For N^o2 / next the River
57 N^o3 Flank Elevation
58 N^o 3 Front next the River
59 Flank elevation
60 River elevation

Inscribed

(52-58) as above and some dimensions given
(54) X Pilaster (i.e. omit pilasters), door
(56) Commons

Signed and dated

25/07/1794
(52-57) dated by Soane July 25 1794

Medium and dimensions

(52-58) Pencil on laid secretary paper (195 x 317 except (55) 187 x 227), (59-60) pencil, pen on laid secretary paper (201 x 316, 180 x 299)

Hand

Sir John Soane RA (1753 - 1837)

Watermark

(52, 56, 58, 59) Britannia with shield holding lance and olive branch within crowned oval (53) Curtis & Sons (54, 57) Band (55) C Taylor

Notes

These rough elevations by Soane, mostly in a feint rubbed pencil, are (52-57) dated 25 July 1794 and must be his earliest surviving ideas for the new House of Lords. The designs are for the shorter, riverside (east) elevation and the longer flank elevation to the south. The first designs (52, 53) have a rusticated base with the flank elevation of 17 bays and the front of nine bays, both have a three-bay raised centre. Drawing 54 was later re-drawn by Frederick Meyer from Soane's rough sketch design see drawing 61. Drawing 55 for the river front has eleven bays that reverse the arrangement of drawing 54; drawing 56 is close to drawing 54 but with an additional three-bay stretched pedestal supporting sculpted ornament above the roof-line. The third designs have (57) for the flank elevation, a 13-bay front wiith a projecting five-bay centre having four inset columns; the river front (58) has 15 bays of which bays 4-6 and 10-12 are raised having four inset columns so as to correspond with the flank elevation. Drawing 59 is not labelled but is a 17-bay flank elevation with a seven-bay centre with windows set at different heights crowned by three-bay storey and flanked by partly columned wings, all raised on a tall rusticated ground floor; this is perhaps the least successful of the designs. The final design is for the river elevation, of nine bays on a rusticated base, with a three-bay centre with Ionic columns and a pediment decorated with sculpted figures and trophies; a conventional but well proportioned design.

S. Sawyer, 'Soane at Westminster', PhD thesis, Columbia University, 1999, p. 185 drawings 52-58, (plans for these designs are drawings 6-8). Reference also to drawing 60, p. 186 and drawing 54, p. 187 and drawings 56-59, p. 188.

Level

Drawing

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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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