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  • image Image 1 for SM 71/2/50
  • image Image 2 for SM 71/2/50
  • image Image 1 for SM 71/2/50
  • image Image 2 for SM 71/2/50

Reference number

SM 71/2/50

Purpose

Design for the Scala Regia, 28 August 1822

Aspect

Section through the Centre of Niches; (verso) plan of the foundations the Scala Regia

Scale

bar scale of 1¼ inches to 1 foot; (verso) bar scale of 1/2 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

as above, labelled: House of Lords, Stone and dimensions given; (verso, pencil) 6 Steps - Six Steps - 6 Steps, Centre of / Staircase and dimensions given

Signed and dated

  • 28 August 1822
    28th August 1822; (verso) 23rd August / 1822

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pink, sepia, yellow ochre and burnt Sienna washes, (verso: pen, pink and sepia washes) pricked for transfer on wove paper (743 x 520)

Hand

Soane Office

Watermark

Smith & Allnutt 1817

Notes

This section shows the coffering of the barrel vault over the third bay of the staircase. The width of the Scala Regia is 9' 9''. On the verso is a plan of the foundations. Sawyer writes: 'errors in his [Soane's] pupils' survey work... required completely redesigning the foundations. The surveys had overestimated the distance between the Prince's Chamber and Wyatt's vestibule by about a foot and a half. This meant that - if the new stairway was to be aligned with Wyatt's work - the south wall of Vardy's structure would have to be entirely cut away, as shown in the subsequent foundation plan [SM 71/2/50v]' (S. Sawyer, Soane at Westminster, PhD thesis, Columbia University, 1999, pp. 404-5). There is also, on the verso of a drawing for the Westminster Law Courts, a fragmentary plan of the foundations, dated 9 August 1822 (SM 37/3/1v).

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).