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Number 1 Royal Terrace was the second house in the terrace, located towards the eastern end of the block, overlooking the River Thames.
This house was part of the Adelphi lottery, in which it was valued at £3,200. It was leased to John Hart Cotton (d1784) of Warfield, Berkshire in 1773, with an annual rent of £210. A year later on 8 September 1774, a 96-year lease was arranged for Dame Elizabeth Simpson, with a yearly rent of £200. In 1793-1801 the political writer and Solicitor General Sir John Mitford was resident in the house; then in 1820-35 came Sir Edward Banks (1770-1835), a partner in a building contractors firm; in 1857-69 came Thomas Allen, an inventor; in 1883-88 the French Club had part of the house; and in 1883-1901 the Arundel Club had another part of the house.
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 1, Royal Terrace
- Finished drawing for the ceiling for the front drawing room, 1769; it is not known if this design was executed (1)
- Design for the chimneypiece for the front drawing room, c1769-70; it is not known if this design was executed (1)
- Finished drawing for the ceiling for the back drawing room, 1769; it is not known if this design was executed (1)
- Design for the chimneypiece for the back drawing room, c1769-70, executed at number 5 Royal Terrace (1)
- Design for the chimneypiece for the front parlour, c1769-70, executed with alterations (1)
- Design for the chimneypiece for the back parlour, c1769-70; it is not known if this design was executed (1)