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Number 1a Royal Terrace was the first house in the terrace, located at the east end of the block, overlooking the River Thames. It was numbered as number 20 Adam Street until 1845, quite understandably as the entrance to the house is on the Adam Street side.
The first occupant of the house from 1774 was Dr John Turton (1735-1806) who was physician to the Royal family, and who paid an annual ground rent of £34.10.0. His widow retained the house until 1809. In 1878-88 the house was occupied by the Junior Garrick Club, and in 1897-36 by the Police Institute.
Level
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).
Contents of Number 1a Royal Terrace (formerly number 20 Adam Street)
- Preliminary design and finished drawing for the ceiling in the front drawing room, 1769, as executed (2)
- Design for the chimneypiece for the front drawing room, c1769-70, unexecuted (1)
- Finished drawing for the ceiling for the back drawing room, 1769, as executed (1)
- Design for the chimneypiece for the back drawing room, c1769-70, as executed (1)
- Design for the chimneypiece for the front parlour, c1769-70, as executed (1)
- Design for the chimneypiece for the back parlour, c1769-70, executed with minor alterations (1)