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Notes
On the 13th of November 1804 the Building Committee ordered Soane to secure the vaulted cellars for the 'large amount of Spanish Dollars expected' (Building Committee minutes, p.16). Earlier (4 October 1804) the British Navy had attacked four Spanish ships carrying valuable cargo. Three of the frigates were brought back to England, delivering to the British Government about £900,000 worth of commodities and Spanish Dollars (in silver and gold). Vaults under the Court Room and the Waiting Rooms were secured for the Spanish Dollars. The other vaults (beneath the Governor's and Deputy Governor's rooms, lobbies and Storekeeper's room) were secured for Bullion and other storage, and two more small cellars were arched over and secured. A corridor was built just south of the Bullion Court, connecting these newly secured vaults to the Bullion Office.
For alternative designs for the vaults around the Bullion Court, dated June 1806, see SM 9/4/42 and SM 9/4/41.
Madeleine Helmer, 2011
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 Vaults beneath the Directors' offices and Pay Hall, 1805-1808, 1824 and 1830 (14)
- [1] General plan, showing drains and vaults in the Bank
- [2] General plan, showing drains and vaults in the Bank
- [3] Design for the Pay Hall, 19 January 1805
- [4] Design for the Committee Room basement, 21 January 1805
- [5] Design for the Court Room basement, 19 January 1805
- [6] Design for iron safes in the Specie Vault, September 1806
- [7] Alternative design for the vaults around the Bullion Court, June 1806
- [8] Alternative design for the vaults around the Bullion Court, June 1806
- [9] Survey for vaults under the new Directors' offices, c. 1808
- [10] Design for vaults under the new Directors' offices, May 1814
- [11] Design for an alteration to the Pay Hall basement
- [12] Variant design for the vaults west of the Bullion Court, 1830
- [13] Variant design for the vaults west of the Bullion Court, 1830
- [14] Variant design for the vaults west of the Bullion Court, 1830