[32] Design for the Stone Building

Explore Collections

You are here: CollectionsOnline / [32] Design for the Stone Building

Browse

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 'Law Courts' Scheme and the Stone Building, c.1740-48 (6)

Use of images and copyright
Enlarge this Image

Reference number

SM 36/1/5

Purpose

[32] Design for the Stone Building

Aspect

Plan of the old Palace of Westminster, the Stone Building and the new Court of Requests

Scale

bar scale of 1/3 inch to 10 feet

Inscribed

labelled: (pencil) N[orth], Westminster Hall, East, N^o 27 and some dimensions given; (verso, Soane's hand) Copies of designs / for the House of / Lords made / by Mr Kent &c

Medium and dimensions

Pen and sepia wash, pricked for transfer on laid paper (335 x 558)

Hand

Soane Office

Notes

This design shows the ground floor of the Court of Requests and the piano nobile of the Stone Building, the new block that was built to house the records of the Court of King's Bench. The space beneath the Court of Requests is vaulted and has 11 openings. It is linked to the House of Lords by a new corridor. The Stone Building is parallel to Westminster Hall. The new building is built around the existing structures; the octagonal Court of Commons Pleas and an adjoining ante room are retained. The west wall of this ante-room becomes part of the main facade of the new building. Likewise the wall adjoining the north front of Westminster Hall - part of the Court of Exchequer - is incorporated into the new structure.

Level

Drawing

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).