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Finished drawings for the addition of a central block, and alterations to William Adam’s wings, largely as executed, c1768-70 (3)

Signed and dated

  • c1768-70

Notes

In the 1760s Robert Adam was commissioned to design a central block between two wings which had been built 40 years earlier to designs by his father, William Adam. These three finished drawings showing Robert Adam's scheme for the addition of a central block, and they are datable to the late 1760s as the fabric of the house was completed and ready for interior decoration in 1770.

The scheme was executed largely in accordance with Adam's drawings. The exceptions to this can be seen in Adam's plan (Adam volume 43/46), in which an alternative staircase was built, and the hall was given apsidal ends in execution. Further to this, Adam's elevation of the principal (north) front (Adam volume 43/42) shows that he had intended to remodel his father's pre-existing wings, giving them castle-style ornamental details to match his new central block. Although the central block was executed in accordance with the drawing, the remodelling of the wings was never undertaken.

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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.

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Contents of Finished drawings for the addition of a central block, and alterations to William Adam’s wings, largely as executed, c1768-70 (3)