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Preliminary designs for an altar and ironwork gates, 1775, unexecuted (1)

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Eighteenth-century law prohibited the existence of freestanding Catholic churches, and as such it was necessary for Adam to add a projecting wing to attach the chapel to the house. This wing incorporates the library and an elevated conservatory which is supported by an archway. Adam did make several changes to the chapel itself, including the addition of Spalatro order columns, but these were removed during the nineteenth century when the chapel was converted into a Greek cross plan. Adam's designs for an altar and gateway, seen here in Adam volume 54/7/244, were not executed.

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Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation

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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.

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Contents of Preliminary designs for an altar and ironwork gates, 1775, unexecuted (1)