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  • image SM Adam volume 21/28
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Reference number

SM Adam volume 21/28

Purpose

[1] Preliminary design for the first scheme, c1777, unexecuted

Aspect

Rough elevations of the principal and garden fronts of a castellated house, with a central block, composed of a four-storey, three-bay tower, canted on the principal front, and a bow on the garden front with the first-storey windows within relieving arches, and this central tower is flanked by three bays, arcaded on the ground storey and with windows within relieving arches on the principal front, and beyond are single-bay square towers, with the first-storey windows within relieving arches on the garden front, and the central block is flanked by single-storey links, being five bays on the principal front, and three bays on the garden front, each with a central door, and being three-storey, three-bay wings, with canted bows on the ground storey, surmounted by arched windows, and with bartizans and pitched roofs on each front, and visible from each front is a single-bay square tower above the link adjacent to the wings

Scale

not to scale

Inscribed

Sketch of Entry front for the Oaks / Sketch of Garden front for the Oaks /It is thought Room may be got over the great Room & Kitchen / by means of turret Stairs. To be building intitely of Bricwork / Coverd with Liardet. The body of the / House to be kept lighter in proportion to the Wings, which / are to Come forward on the Entry side & be kept back on / the side towards the grounds & prospect

Signed and dated

  • c1777
    datable to c1777

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil and wash on laid paper (198 x 205)

Hand

Robert Adam

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, Index p. 24
Astley, 2000, p. 29
King, 2001, Volume II, p. 164
For a full list of literature references see scheme notes.

Level

Drawing

Exhibition history

Robert Adam's Castles, Sir John Soane's Museum, London, 16 June - 16 September 2000

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).