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Reference number

SM 36/2/8

Purpose

[37] Design for a new Parliament House

Aspect

First floor plan

Scale

bar scale of 2/5 inch to 10 feet

Inscribed

labelled: (pencil) North, Westminster Hall, House of / Commons, Commons Gallery, Court of Request, Painted / Chamber, House / of Lords, Princes / Chamber, Extends 370-0 Feet, (pencil) The River Thames and dimensions given

Medium and dimensions

Pen on laid paper with one fold mark (527 x 744)

Hand

C18th hand

Watermark

fleur-de-lis within crowned cartouche / WR = IV

Notes

In this late design for a new Parliament House the building is much reduced in size and many of the existing structures are retained. Indeed, the House of Lords is the only significant existing building to be demolished. The drawing therefore represents a more economical design. Entering from Old Palace Yard, complete separation of Lords and Commons is enforced by the existence of two parallel corridors that lead from the entrance hall to the main building where a cross axial spine runs from the Commons Chamber to the House of Lords.

(Salmon, p. 354 and note 152)

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).