[1] Design for elevation to Old Palace Yard

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For example, Sir Robert Taylor (Bank of England), Sir William Chambers (Office of Works) etcetera
- William Kent (c.1685-1748): Westminster, London: designs for a new Parliament House, 1733-c.1748 (37)
  - The 'Pantheon' Schemes, 1732-33 (9)

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Reference number

SM 37/4/1

Purpose

[1] Design for elevation to Old Palace Yard

Aspect

Part elevation

Scale

bar scale of 1/12 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

(later hand) N^o 1

Signed and dated

1733

Medium and dimensions

Pen and sepia (brown) wash on laid paper, bound in volume (320 x 467)

Hand

Stephen Wright - 1780)

Notes

This part elevation by Kent closely relates to a complete, alternative version at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A 3518.9; Salmon, fig. 13.17), which itself relates to a design by Lord Burlington (TNA, WORK 29/3358 (21); Salmon, fig. 13.18). Together these drawings represent the earliest designs for a new Parliament House.

Drawing [1] features a Composite colonnade with a projecting, octastyle portico with pediment, behind which is the dome that gives the first scheme its name. In contrast to the design at the V&A, this one has statuary above the balustrade (as in Burlington's design) and introduces a mezzanine level within the basement.

(Salmon, pp. 330-31)

Level

Drawing

Exhibition history

William Kent 1685-1748: A Poet on Paper, Sir John Soane's Museum, London, 30 October - 19 December 1998

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).