[17] Design for part of a new Parliament House suggesting a phased construction

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- William Kent (c.1685-1748): Westminster, London: designs for a new Parliament House, 1733-c.1748 (37)
  - The Intermediate 'Chiswick' Scheme, c.1734-39 (7)

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Reference number

SM 36/2/19

Purpose

[17] Design for part of a new Parliament House suggesting a phased construction

Aspect

Part plan

Scale

bar scale of 5/9 inch to 10 feet

Inscribed

labelled: (pencil) Westminster Hall, The Painted Chamber, 75, 50, The River Thames, Holds 508 / Gall^y 120

Signed and dated

1734-39
circa

Medium and dimensions

Pen and sepia washes, pricked for transfer on laid paper (377 x 518)

Hand

William Kent (1685 - 1748)

Watermark

IHS / I Villedary

Notes

This part plan, which corresponds more closely to drawing [12] than drawing [16], suggests two things. The first is that a phased construction was envisaged, wherein the old House of Commons, Painted Chamber and House of Lords could remain standing while the new House of Commons was built. The second is that the eastern part of the building would not encroach into the river.

(Salmon, p. 339 and note 100)

Level

Drawing

Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation

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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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