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- 1783-94
It has been suggested by Rowan that the Mr Stevenson is question was Nathaniel Stevenson of Braidwood, Lanarkshire. One of the drawings for the 1794 scheme (Adam volume 33/73) is inscribed Elevation towards the River, and Braidwood is known to have overlooked the Vale of Clyde. The inclusion of domestic and agricultural facilities and modest reception rooms suggest that the house was designed for 'a landed family of modest consequence'. According to Rowan, however, an alternative identity for Mr Stevenson could be Dr Alexander Stevenson, a medical physician from Glasgow. Unfortunately there is no evidence in either case.
A more recent speculation as to the identity of Mr Stevenson is Alexander Stevenson of Dalgain, Ayrshire. He was the son of a physicisn in Edinburgh, but graduated at Glasgow. He was twice president of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow (1752, 1773) and was also Regius Professor of Medicine (1766-89). He was elected Clerk of the Senate in 1777, and was also a co-founder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1783. He persuaded Glasgow University in 1786 to subscribe £500 to the building fund for Glasgow Royal Infirmary. He resided at 34 Virginia Street, Glasgow in 1755-91.
See also: Hertford Street, number unknown, London: unexecuted design for a ceiling for the drawing room for Mrs Stevenson. It is not known if Mrs Stevenson of Hertford Street was any relation to the Mr Stevenson who commissioned these designs for a castellated house.
Literature:
A.T. Bolton, The architecture of Robert and James Adam, 1922, Volume II, Index p. 58; A. Rowan, Designs for castles and country villas by Robert and James Adam, 1985, pp. 122, 150; D. King, The complete works of Robert & James Adam and unbuilt Adam, 2001, Volume II, pp. 157-58, 163, 166
With thanks to researcher, Mark Dougan.
Frances Sands, 2012
Updated 2021
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 Mr Stevenson, design for a castellated house of unknown location, 1783 and 1794 (13)
- Preliminary designs and finished drawings for a castellated house, 1783, unexecuted (7)
- Preliminary designs and designs for a castellated house, 26 July 1794 (6)