Design for the ground floor, 1 July 1825

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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: alterations and additions, 1817-28 (220)
      - New committee rooms and library, 1824-27 (56)
        Designs for new committee rooms, July 1825

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Reference number

SM 51/3/17

Purpose

Design for the ground floor, 1 July 1825

Aspect

Plan of the Ground Floor / [in another hand - ?George Bailey] of a Design for New Committee Rooms / for the House of Lords

Scale

bar scale of 1/8 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

as above, labelled: 25'6'' by 11'10½'', 25'6'' by 28'6'', 25'6'' by 11'10½'', 24' by 28'0'', 16'3'' by 22.0, 9'9'' by 12'3'', 16'7½'' by 18'3'', 26'0'' by 11'9'', 26'0'' by 11'9''

Signed and dated

1 July 1825
Lincolns Inn Fields / 1^st July 1825

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pink and dark pink washes, pricked for transfer with multi-ruled sepia and black wash border on wove paper (524 x 730)

Hand

Possibly Stephen Burchell (1806 - c.1843)
Pupil January 1823 - April 1828.

Watermark

Smith & Allnutt 1823

Notes

In July 1825 a select committee decided that the committee room that was being built between the Painted Chamber and Scala Regia would be better suited "to the purpose of keeping the journals and other books belonging to the House". Designs for a new building towards the river were submitted by Soane and it was agreed by the select committee that these "will afford two committee rooms of large dimensions, and a third of a smaller size; and that the upper and lower stories of the same building will provide sufficient space for the placing and safe keeping of the increasing mass of records, papers, and writings, which cannot now for want of room be deposited in the Parliament Office, and at the same time, for the necessary accommodation of some of the officers and servants of the House" (King's Works, VI, 1973, p. 523).

The following plans have the existing committee rooms at the bottom of the sheet, shown in a dark pink wash. The new committee rooms (in pink wash) are situated between the existing committee rooms and the river (at the top of the sheet). Catalogued here is a set of plans for the ground, principal and second floors with two sets of copies made on 1 and 5 July 1825.

The new extension is essentially a 5-bay square with access from all three levels of the existing committee rooms. The ground floor has nine rooms plus closets and corridors and a large, open-newel staircase.

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).