[21] Variant design for the first floor of a new Parliament House

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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 First 'Belvedere' Scheme, 20 August 1739 (9)

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Reference number

SM 36/2/18

Purpose

[21] Variant design for the first floor of a new Parliament House

Aspect

First floor plan

Scale

bar scale of 5/9 inch to 10 feet

Inscribed

labelled: (pencil) River Thames, 33, 50, 50, 75

Signed and dated

1739

Medium and dimensions

Pen and pencil, pricked for transfer on laid paper (373 x 526)

Hand

William Kent (1685 - 1748)

Watermark

fleur-de-lis within crowned cartouche / 4 / WR

Notes

This design is perhaps closer to the 'Chiswick' Scheme in that the east-west axis is restored and the apsidal lobbies between the central atrium and the Houses of Lords and Commons reappear, albeit with the apses reversed (cf. drawing [16]). The hall in the centre of the eastern front is reminiscent of the designs for the Cottonian Library (drawing [4]) with its apses and screens of columns. The central atrium is now rectangular and has colonnades along the north and south sides.

(Salmon, p. 343)

Level

Drawing

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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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