The site and Dance's design
The City of London's estate in and to the east of Tottenham Court Road included several tenements on which the lease reverted in 1801 (shown on a plan dated April 1801, CLRO 89.E.2). The City Lands sub-committee met on 21 July 1796 to view the site and Dance was asked to prepare proposals for laying out building plots. After two designs were rejected his design of September 1800 was accepted. This was for a plan forming 'two crescents at the north and south ends of the said ground and a street to lead from north to south. The houses to be erected thereon to be not less than the second rate of building and to cover the whole front of Tottenham Court Road with buildings adapted for Trades or Business' (CLRO, City Lands Journals, 3 February 1801, quoted by Stroud p.188). The site was cleared and the first lots put up for sale on 28 January 1802 at two shillings and sixpence per foot. The following year Dance reported that because of potential problems with the foundations he proposed altering his house designs so that the fronts were 21 instead of 23 feet wide. The drawing catalogued here, with its dimensions of Street = 21:3 / Crescents = 21.9 might be assumed to represent his final scheme except that a drawing made for Soane shows a somewhat different design ([SM 18/7/15]).

Further evidence for the executed design
The drawing, dated December 1813, was drawn by Robert Dennis Chantrell (1793-1872), a pupil of Soane from 1807 to 1814. Chantrell's bird's-eye view was probably made for one of Soane's Royal Academy lectures but, not given in the 'List of Soane's lecture illustrations at the Royal Academy' (published in Watkin, 1996, pp.672-93), must have remained unused. The drawing's date suggests that it was intended for the second series of lectures (VII-XII) first given in 1815. Lecture X touched on town planning, arguing for a master plan rather than piecemeal development by individual builders, and, for instance, advocated 'portions of the circle' for opening up views and breaking the monotony of 'miserably narrow and confined [streets] with cramped and crippled houses' (quoted in Watkin, ibid., p.628).

Soane's Day Book records that on 30 November 1813 Chantrell was Taking Sketch of Crescent near Gower / Street &c. On 1-4 and 6 December, Chantrell is recorded as Abt View of Crescent near Gower Street; nothing is recorded of him on 7-9 December. The coarsely drawn aerial view from the west was, it is inferred, drawn on the spot probably from the roofs of the buildings in Tottenham Court Road backing on to the site. It shows 14 houses in each of the crescents and 17 houses either side of Alfred Place. An engraved plan published by the Office of Works, Guildhall (57.2.6-7, two copies) shows 11 houses in each of the crescents and 18 houses either side of Alfred Place. Chantrell's view of the realised scheme shows a few minor variations in the elevations when compared with the drawing catalogued above. As built, it seems that the dormer windows were square-headed rather than semicircular, the front doors lost their side-lights and the first floor balconies became continuous rather than individual to each window. The two centre houses of each crescent are emphasised by attic instead of dormer floors and the first floor windows are set in blind arches. In Alfred Place, the five houses towards the north have a wider frontage than the remaining 12 to the south while the houses in the crescent also vary between two and three bays in width, doubtless reflecting the change in frontage after 1803.

The bird's eye view also shows the backyards of the Alfred Place houses on the side nearest to Tottenham Court Road. No basement windows are shown so either they were unlit or else were half-basements. Each yard is separated by a wall about as high as the head of the ground floor windows. The walls are in fact long 'sheds' with single sloping roofs. Access from the house is through a narrow door the width of the windows above it that light the staircase. No details of these sheds are shown but presumably they each housed a privy and fuel stores. No front basement stairs are shown though they were quite common by this time. A plan of 1899 shows that a few were later added (CLRO, Architect's Plans 728).

The 'sheds' in the back gardens are a puzzle. An estate leasing plan with plots marked 1805 to 1811 (CLRO 89.E.3) shows only conventional back garden walls or (on the west side) dotted lines. The gardens on the west side have been encroached upon by premises in Tottenham Court Road. A similar plan of 1836 shows back extensions of varying size, none of which reach to the bottom of the garden; the narrowest is 8 feet wide. Probably Chantrell, not wishing to draw the unaesthetic irregularity of the back yards of Alfred Place, thought up his own solution - or did Soane suggest it?

An 'Elevation of Front / Proposed by Mr Mawley for building Two houses / on his ground South Crescent' dated 7 January 1805 (CLRO, Comptroller's City Lands Plan 474) has a front corresponding to those of the two centre houses of each crescent shown in Chantrell's view. Vacant lots on North Crescent were still being advertised for sale in 1809 (CLRO, City Lands Journal, entry for 31 May).

Afterwards
Alfred Place with North Crescent and South Crescent at each end still exist on their original plan but all of the original buildings have disappeared through rebuilding at different times.

LITERATURE. Stroud pp.188-9; Kalman pp.206, 371 (n.22); D. Watkin, Sir John Soane: Enlightenment thought and the Royal Academy lectures, Cambridge, 1996.