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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 Public buildings
- Aberdeen Record House, Aberdeen: unexecuted designs for the building, 1772 (4)
- The Admiralty Screen, Whitehall, London: 1759-60, executed (6)
- Appleby, Cumbria: unexecuted designs for the town hall, county court and gaol, commissioned by Sir James Lowther, 5th Baronet, 1766-67 (7)
- Bath Prison, Grove Street, Bath, Somerset, unexecuted designs commissioned by William Pulteney, 1771 (2)
- Bury St Edmunds market hall and theatre (later the Market Cross), Suffolk: executed designs for the building, 1775 (3)
- Cromarty Parish Church, Ross and Cromarty, Highlands: designs for a church and a house for George Ross, unexecuted, 1772-81 (11)
- Deputy Ranger's Lodge, Green Park, London, commissioned by Archibald Montgomerie, 11th Earl of Eglington, 1769, executed to a variant design, and for Lord William Gordon, 1778, unexecuted (10)
- Dublin, unexecuted design for a pedestal for the Royal Exchange, 1770 (2)
- Edinburgh Riding House, Nicolson Street, Edinburgh: executed designs for a riding house for John Fordyce Esq, 1763 (9)
- Emmanuel Hospital, James Street, Westminster, unexecuted designs for a chapel, c1778 (10)
- Fort George, Inverness: executed and unexecuted designs for chimneypieces for Major-General William Skinner, c1767 (5)
- Hertford courts of justice and corn market (now the Shire Hall), Fore Street, Hertford, Hertfordshire: alternative schemes for the building, 1767-68 (9)
- High Wycombe Shambles and Butter Market (now the Little Market Hall), Buckinghamshire: 1761, executed (3)
- Humberstone School and Almshouses, Humbertstone, 1780, unexecuted (4)
- Hyde Park Corner, London, designs for a triumphal arch, gatehouses and screens, c1778, unexecuted (18)
- King's Bench Prison, Bench Walk (now McCoid Way), Southwark, London: unexecuted designs for additions to the building and enclosing walls, 1773 (8)
- King's College, Cambridge, designs for a chapel altar, new college buildings and a library, 1768-88, unexecuted (28)
- Lasswade Church, Midlothian: preliminary design and finished drawings for a church, 1791, unexecuted
- Lock Hospital, Grosvenor Place, London, unexecuted designs for a hospital and chapel, commissioned by William Bromfield, c1759 (5)
- Mistley Church, Essex, for the Rt. Hon. Richard Rigby, c1776, as executed (11)
- New Town, Bath, Somerset: unexecuted street scheme commissioned by William Pulteney, 1777-82 (9)
- Ordnance Office, Westminster, London, c1778, unexecuted (5)
- Oxford Corn Market, design and finished drawings for a building, c1772, unexecuted (4)
- Oxford, Magdalen Chapel, survey drawing for the west entrance, ND (1)
- Pulteney Bridge, Bath, Somerset: executed scheme commissioned by William Pulteney, 1770 (6)
- Register House, Princes Street, Edinburgh: executed, including unexecuted designs for a terrace on Leith Street, a Deputy Ranger’s House, and a guard house, 1772-92 (28)
- Richmond Park observatory: unexecuted designs for an observatory and weather station for King George III, 1767 (6)
- Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh: unexecuted designs for a new hall and library, c1760, unexecuted (11)
- Royal Hospital, Chelsea, London: designs for chimneypieces for the Governor's house, for the Board of Commissioners, 1776 (2)
- Steuartown, Church, North Edinburgh: finished designs for a church, 1788, unexecuted (4)
- The Tower of London, London, designs for chimneypieces and mirror frames for Mr Weaver, 1782-3, unexecuted (12)
- Upper Assembly Rooms, Bennett Street, Bath: unexecuted designs for the building, c1765-68 (14)