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Purpose
Signed and dated
- c1775
Notes
William Wilson (c1720-96), was the third son of Reverend William Wilson of Stiffkley, Norfolk. He never married, but served as MP for Ilchester in 1761-68, and Camelford in 1768-74. In The history and antiquities of the County of Leicester (1795-1815), the antiquarian John Nichols wrote of Wilson that he 'passed the principal part of his life at the German Spa and other parts of the continent, and died, immensely rich, at Pisa in Tuscany'. That Adam's designs for the house were not built is most probably a result of Wilson being largely abroad. He owned land in Keythorpe, Leicestershire, and it may have been here that he intended to build, although this is not known.
Literature:
A.T. Bolton, The architecture of Robert and James Adam, 1922, Volume II, pp. 58, 91; D. King, The architecture of Robert & James Adam and unbuilt Adam, 2001, Volume II, pp. 102, 136; A. Rowan, 'Bob the Roman', Heroic antiquity & the architecture of Robert Adam, 2003, pp. 45-46; History of Parliament online: 'Wilson, William (c1720-96), of Keythorpe, Leics.'
Frances Sands, 2013
Level
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).