The surviving upper office, as modified by Soane in the 1820s, still survives. It is tiny and cannot be open to the public but we plan to restore it in 2022-23 and hope to provide some regular access for small groups once that work is completed. Photo by Derry Moore
John Soane did not ever work in this busy office. He had his own ‘Little Study’, with a desk that he designed himself neatly fitted into the window bay and a pull-out table just the right size for a drawing board. The light that fell onto his work surface was modulated by the use of dwarf Venetian blinds whose angle could be changed by adjusting a turn-screw set into the top edge. It was also softened by the pale-yellow glass in the skylight above, filtering the bright sunshine. He looked out onto the Monument Court with its walls inset with a variety of architectural fragments salvaged from older buildings.
Hung on the walls around him, as we can see from Gandy’s view of the Office in 1822, was a collection of Roman marble fragments. These had a special personal significance for him, having belonged to his early teacher, the architect Henry Holland, for whom they had been collected in the 1790s. Soane arranged them himself, using some of the column sections to create the idiosyncratic fireplace surround, flanked by cinerary urns in niches echoing in miniature those of the ancient Roman columbaria where such urns stored the ashes of the dead to form large cemeteries. Just as we sit surrounded by our favourite items and mementoes of our travels, so Gandy’s view shows Soane surrounded by his treasures including a fine small group of bronzes on the mantelpiece. On the desk is his inkstand and a quill pen and books are tucked into the specially constructed apertures either side of the desk. A portfolio case with a black cover, full of drawings and paperwork, sits on his table. Two vertical card racks either side of the doorway are brimming with visiting cards, notes and invitations – as full as our mantelpieces in happier times!
In Gandy’s view we see from Soane’s office into the next room, a small Dressing Room, whose title gives us a hint about how Soane’s day might have worked. He could have been called either to meet an important visitor arriving at the front door or to go through the door we see in the distance in Gandy’s watercolour. That leads to a passageway that goes directly to the back door, the Office door. Off the narrow passage is both a closet where he might have hung jackets or stored his wig and a flushing water-closet, a luxury that was matched by a bath and WCs he provided for the use of his servants downstairs in the basement. While Soane washed his hands at the basin in his Dressing Room or adjusted his cravat in the large mirror hanging on the door he could have glanced round at a group of framed works that he must have chosen specifically for this private space. Portraits of two close women friends, Maria Denman and Nora Brickenden are the equivalent of our family photographs. They hang near a design for a Classical Dog Kennel in Soane’s own hand – a reminder of happy days exploring the Roman campagna with his early Patron, the Earl-Bishop of Derry on his Grand Tour between 1778 and 1780 and a plan of Paris, a city that Soane visited three times, in 1778, 1814 and, finally, in 1819 and whose architecture inspired many of his own (alas unrealised) grand projects for London.
Just as we work at home today in surroundings that we have to a greater or lesser degree personally ‘curated’ to reflect the things that matter to us, so Soane’s ‘Little Study’ and Dressing Room provided him with an inspirational work-space where he could tackle his projects surrounded with reminders of past pleasures and the world beyond.
