I’ve called Project Soane, a detective story and a jigsaw puzzle before, but perhaps it is better described as a Treasure Hunt: hidden clues, buried gold, one legged parrots ? Seriously though, up to a couple of weeks ago I assumed that three out of four elevations inside the Bullion Yard were down to Sampson and Taylor, but as I looked more carefully at the vast hoard of reference material we have collected into a Box account (our treasure chest) … I began to realise just how much effort Soane put into remodeling the entire space.
This drawing of the West Side shows Sampson’s fenestration in yellow on top of Soane’s. Basically there are 4 bays superimposed on three. So it wasn’t just a case of demolishing the back wall and rebuilding it as a shallow curve. He must have taken them all down, probably one at a time, and rebuilt them with a different bay spacing. But it doesn’t end there. I finally convinced myself that he dropped the level of this courtyard down one floor to…