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Reference number

SM Adam volume 21/33

Purpose

[18] Preliminary design for a memorial tower, 1774, unexecuted

Aspect

Rough plan and elevation of a square crenellated tower containing three storeys of windows, with a porch containing an arched door accessed by stairs, and with a round tower to one side, containing spiral staircase, and surmounted by a conical roof

Scale

not to scale

Inscribed

Sketch of a Tower for the Honble Geo Baillie / on top of the Hill at Mellerstain / Over the entry door a pannel for a Monumental / Inscription / This [ _ _ _ _ _ ] of the Building / towards the House / The little tower with the Stairs to be 6 feet / Diamr within & the walls from 3 feet / at Bottom to nearly 2 feet at top / Cornice & facia wanted for the Gallery at Mellerstain / over a Grecian Ionic Capital & Base / a Drawing of a Cieling for that Room with / Compartments filled with Pannels & figures / in the Center with a Cieling for the Arches / Within the Columns, & a Spandrel finishing for / the ends over the Columns, Architraves for Doors & Windows & a Drawing of a Chimneypiece and some measurements given

Signed and dated

  • 29/10/1774
    Adelphi 29th Octr. 1774.

Medium and dimensions

Pen and pencil on laid paper (395 x 325)

Hand

Robert Adam

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, Index p. 22
Astley, 2000, p. 34
King, 2001, Volume II, p. 245
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).