The drawings described in this catalogue were produced in Wren's office over a period of nearly sixty years[1]. They originally formed part of a larger corpus of drawings, some of which have disappeared. The drawings at All Souls nevertheless cover the full spectrum of Wren's career, including his work for the church, the crown, and the universities. The contents of the collection inevitably reflect these origins. Many of the drawings show unexecuted designs (hence their survival), while others were made as preparatory studies for drawings that left the office and never returned.
The collection was stored in the Office of Works at Whitehall, where Wren and his staff occasionally consulted it[2]. Wren retained the drawings at his retirement, and in 1723 the collection was inherited by his son Christopher. It was broken up after the latter's death in 1747, and the drawings were auctioned 'by Mr. Langford […] at his House […] in the Great Piazza, Covent Garden' on 4 April 1749. They were sold in 16 lots (939 items in all), numbered 30–45:
- Lot 30:
- Eighty-two Designs, and two Prints of St. Paul's Church (most part) pasted into a Port Folio.
- Lot 31:
- A Hundred and fourteen large and finished Drawings of St. Paul's, Bow, and other Churches in London: Also the Monument, Whitehall, Winchester Castle, Trinity College, Cambridge &c. and three Prints: all pasted into a large Book.
- Lot 32:
- Thirty-two very large Drawings of Whitehall, Windsor and Greenwich Hospital, in a Port Folio.
- Lot 33:
- A Book of Astronomical Schemes.
- Lot 34:
- An hundred Drawings and Sketches of London Churches, in a Port Folio.
- Lot 35:
- Sixty-six Drawings of Hampton-Court, all pasted into a Book.
- Lot 36:
- An Hundred and two Drawings and Sketches of Kensington Palace, and Miscellaneous Architecture, in a Book.
- Lot 37:
- An Hundred and one ditto [Drawings and Sketches], in a Cover.
- Lot 38:
- An Hundred and thirteen ditto, in a Portfolio.
- Lot 39:
- Sixty-nine ditto, of Hampton Court, Warwick Church, and other Buildings, in a Cover.
- Lot 40:
- Seven large finished Drawings of St Paul's, I. of the Monument, and a Ground Plan of London after the Fire.
- Lot 41:
- A large Port Folio containing finished Drawings of the Hotel des Invalides at Paris: all pasted in, except two
- Lot 42:
- An Hundred and fifty Drawings and Sketches of Winchester Palace, and Miscellaneous Architecture; with a Parcel of Papers relating to the Subject, in a Port Folio.
- Lot 43:
- A large high-finished Drawing of St. Paul's.
- Lot 44:
- A ditto of the Inside of St. Paul's.
- Lot 45:
- A long ditto of an intended New Palace at Westminster.
At least five copies of the sale catalogue survive, one of which is annotated with the names of the various buyers[3]. The drawings at All Souls were contained in lots 31, 32, 37–39 (429 items), which were purchased for £6 11s. by 'Dr Stack': presumably Thomas Stack, Foreign Secretary to the Royal Society. They reappeared in the London sale rooms in 1751 and were purchased by All Souls for £23. The college was then in the process of stocking its newly completed Codrington Library. Benjamin Buckler, Sub-Warden, and William Blackstone, Bursar of Laws, played an active role in the purchase, but the cost of the drawings was met by the Codrington Fund. Within thirty years of Wren's death, then, the main bulk of his collection had arrived at the college where he had been a fellow almost a hundred years earlier.
The drawings were reordered in 1800, when they were pasted into five folio volumes and given new numbers. The contents of Lot 32, however, were retained as Volume 5. A catalogue of Volumes 1–3 was published by James Elmes in the General Chronicle for October 1812, but this seems to have attracted little attention. Between 1924 and 1943 the drawings were skilfully reproduced by the Wren Society, and a hand-list of the collection was published in Volume 20 of the Wren Society (1943). In recent years the drawings have been restored and disbound, occasionally revealing additional designs on the backs of sheets. They continue to be known by their original volume numbers.
The remaining portion of Wren's collection fared less well. Lots 40, 42, and 45 in the 1749 sale were purchased for £6 0s. 6d. by the 3rd Duke of Argyll. They were subsequently purchased by the 3rd Earl of Bute and generally presumed to have perished in a fire at Luton Hoo in 1771. In 1951, however, they unexpectedly resurfaced in the London sale rooms[4]. Seven items were purchased by All Souls (catalogue numbers 206, 261, 267, 271, 275, 282, 289), including a spectacular design – nearly four and half metres long – for rebuilding Whitehall Palace in 1698 (lot 45 in the 1749 sale). The remaining drawings in the Bute sale are today at the Royal Institute of British Architects, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Cherokee Ranch and Castle Foundation (Sedalia, Colorado), St Paul's Cathedral Library, Winchester City Museum, and Trinity College, Cambridge. Lot 35 can be identified as the 'Hampton Court Volume' at Sir John Soane's Museum (SM 110), which Soane acquired from George Dance the Younger in 1817. Lots 33–34 were purchased for £1 8s by 'Prowse' – presumably Thomas Prowse MP (c. 1708–1767) – but their subsequent fate is unknown. Nor can lots 30, 36, 41, 43, or 44 be accounted for. Lot 30 was purchased by 'Grover' – presumably John Grover, a clerk at the House of Commons – but it is probably a mistake to associate this lot with the collection of over two hundred drawings for St Paul's Cathedral today on deposit at Guildhall Library. The latter collection more probably descends from the small office of works maintained by Wren at the cathedral.
Footnotes:
1. The information contained in this note is based on Simmons 1977 unless stated otherwise. [return ↑]
2. See, for example, cat. no. 243, which was subsequently endorsed by Hawksmoor. [return ↑]
3. Watkin 1972, 41–42. See also WS 20, 78–80, where a second annotated copy is given. [return ↑]
4. Catalogue of Important Architectural Drawings Including a Remarkable Series by Sir Christopher Wren, Sotheby & Co., London, 23 May 1951. [return ↑]