Preliminary survey

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- 'Original Sketches / Miscellaneous / Architectural / Subjects': album with 195 drawings by Soane, Dance, Holland and others, dated c.1757 to 1818 (volume 42)
  - Volume 42/41: John Soane (1753-1837): Alterations and additions to Betchworth Castle, Surrey for Henry Peters, c.1798

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Reference number

SM volume 42/41

Purpose

Preliminary survey

Aspect

Rough plan labelled M^rsPeter's Room with rough plan to a larger scale of right-hand part of the room

Inscribed

as above, Ch[imne]y, Pas[s]age, (?) ----- for doors, room into Pas[s]age, Bed and some dimensions given

Signed and dated

datable to 1798

Medium and dimensions

Brown pen on laid paper with four fold marks (201 x 324)

Hand

Soane

Watermark

Britannia with spear and shield within a crowned oval frame

Notes

Betchworth Castle, first converted to a house in 1690 and now in ruins, is shown in Soane's survey drawings and designs for alterations and additions (SM 5/1/1-15 and see also Concise Catalogue) as thick-walled and crenellated. Soane's first drawings are dated from July 1798 and over the next three years he designed a dairy, icehouse, stables and greenhouse (for which see 42/141) as well as improvements to the house. These included alterations to Mr Peter's room and dressing room which were on the ground floor between the butler's room and the entrance lobby. Mrs Peter's bedroom and dressing room were on the first floor opposite the nurseries and Soane's more finished drawings seem not to show any alterations to those rooms.
See 42/141, 42/154, 42/155 for details of a greenhouse, dairy and stables for Betchworth

Literature

I. Nairn and N.Pevsner, Surrey, 1971, p.111

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).