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Reference number
Purpose
Signed and dated
- 1711
Main Year - 1712-1714
Other Years
Notes
In September 1727 a general audit of the accounts was prepared, accompanied by an estimate prepared by Colen Campbell (Surveyor from 1726 to 1729), Hawksmoor and James of the cost of completing the hospital (£131,750; see [11/10], and Bold 2000, p. 156). The costed building works do not include any alterations on the inside of King Charles II Court. However, an account submitted in September 1728 included work for the creation of fourteen additional cabins, by narrowing those already there to increase accommodation. Hawksmoor's master plan drawing of 1728 in the RIBA Library Drawings collection (Bold 2000, fig. 144) and his record drawing of the ground floor plan of King Charles Court [11/4], both state that the building holds 206 men. This is an increase of fourteen on the figure of 192 in the list of men in the Extract of November 1728 at 109/4. The difference of fourteen at this later date is probably explained by the men not having yet been accommodated in the new cabins.
The general audit in 1727-28 is sufficient to explain the existence of a set of four floor plans of King Charles Court marked with cabins enclosures in the hand of an office draughtsman [11/6-8], which were in turn based on drawings by Hawksmoor. Two of these are at the Soane [11/3 and 4]; another set by Hawksmoor is at the National Maritime Museum (Wren Society, VI, pl. 19, top).
A further aspect of the completion of the final scheme was the fitting out of the south pavilion of Queen Anne's Building in 1729. The drawing for this [11/11] is the latest dated example with notes in Hawksmoor's hand.
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).
Contents of [10] Designs for completing the main courts and river wall, 1711-14
- [10/1] Record drawing of the east elevation of King Charles II Building, probably prepared in connection with the decision in 1711 to duplicate the north pavilion of this building as the new north pavilion of the base wing
- [10/2] Presentation design for the new north elevation of the King Charles II Building and base wing, datable 1711-12, involving the doubling of the north pavilion of the King Charles II Building and the addition of a linking bay with an arched entrance at ground level.
- [10/3] Preparatory design for finishing the stone stairs of the river wharf landing stage, the stone parapet and the central iron railings of the river wall, c.1712
- [10/4] Design for the ceiling and vaulting of the colonnade between the hall and the chapel of King William's Court, c.1713-14