[38-41] Design 'A*' and copies (4)

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Office of Works
  - London: Palace of Westminster: designs for alterations and additions, 1793-1828 (499)
    - London: House of Lords, Palace of Westminster: official (mostly domeless) designs, July 1794 - February 1795 (134)

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Reference number

SM (38) 16/5/7 (39) 16/5/6 (40) 36/4/47 (41) 36/4/45

Purpose

[38-41] Design 'A*' and copies (4)

Aspect

38 Plan of ground floor
39 Plan of ground floor
40 Plan of ground floor to a reduced scale
41 Plan of ground floor to a reduced scale

Scale

(38, 39) to a scale of 1/7 inch to 1 foot (40, 41) to a scale of 1/15 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

(38) The Plan of a Design to render the House of Lords and the Rooms and Offices appertaining thereto more commodious. A*, labelled: Old Palace Yard, The River Thames, M^r Delavall's Offices, rooms labelled: Arcade, The Vestibule, The / Lords Robing Room, Officers of / the Lord / Great Chamberlain, Attendants on the Royal Family, Robing Room for / the Prince of Wales, and the rest / of the Royal Family, His Majesty's / Robing Room, Council / attending / the House, Witnesses / attending / the House, Committee Clerk, Committee Room (twice), The Clerk / of Parliament, Assistant Clerk / of Parliament, The Lord Chancellor / and Judges, The House / of Lords, The Painted Chamber, The / Lord Chancellor, Attendants / on the / Lord Chancellor, The Bishops / Robing Room, The / Archbishops, Messengers with Bills / from the / House of Commons, Black Rod (twice) together with doorkeepers' lobbies, lobbies, closets, water closets, coals and wood store, passages and staircase and some room dimensions given
(39) The Plan of a Design to render the House of Lords and the Rooms and Offices appertaining thereto more commodious, labelled: Mr Delavall's Offices and (pencil) Mr Delaval's House, rooms labelled as drawing 38 and some room dimensions given
(40) The Plan of a Design to render the House of Lords / and the Rooms and Offices appertaining thereto more commodious, rooms labelled as drawings 38 and 39 and some room dimensions given
(41) labelled: Old Palace Yard, The River Thames, M^r Delaval's House, M^r Delaval's Offices and rooms labelled as drawings 38-40 and some room dimensions given

Medium and dimensions

(38) Pen, sepia, red, yellow-green and blue washes, partly pricked for transfer on laid paper, 2 sheets joined, two old repairs (737 x 1223) (39) pen, sepia, pink and blue-green washes, pricked for transfer on laid paper, 2 sheets joined (737 x 1180) (40) pen, sepia, red,yellow and blue-green washes, with triple-ruled and black wash border on laid paper (490 x 665) (41) pen, sepia, red and blue-green washes, with quadruple-ruled and black wash border on laid paper (525 x 740)

Hand

(38, 39) Thomas Jeans (c.1775 -1866, pupil August 1792 - 25 August 1797) (40, 41) Frederick Meyer (1775 - ?, pupil April 1791-1796)

Watermark

(38-40) J Whatman 1794 (41) Edmeads & Pine 1794 with fleur-de-lis within crowned cartouche and below, GR and 1794

Notes

The four drawings are for the same design labelled 'A*' that is a variant of design 'A' (drawings 36 and 37). Both sets of drawings have the principal entrance on the southward side and the royal route is the same but the design of the spaces differs so that A* has a four-column portico and the robing rooms on either side have an apsidal end behind which are a lobby and water closet. The entrance has two flights of steps and is necessarily narrower than in A (drawings 36-37) because it is on axis with an existing room that has to be kept and is now an oval lobby. The single file arrangement of offices for the various functionaries is the same as in 'A' though the room labels differ.

S. Sawyer, 'Soane at Westminster', PhD thesis, Columbia University, 1999, p.180. The final design (a 'synthesis of two planning approaches' taken from 'A1' to 'A6') includes drawings 38-41. Reference also to drawing 40, p. 181, and pp. 182, 184 for drawings 38-41.

Level

Drawing

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

If you have any further information about this object, please contact us: drawings@soane.org.uk

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).