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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2016
Sir John Soane’s tomb in St Pancras Gardens, London (Fig. 1), has a claim to popular fame as the inspiration for Sir Giles Gilbert Scott’s design of the K2 telephone kiosk. It is also one of only two tombs in London to be listed Grade I; the other is Karl Marx’s in Highgate Cemetery.
Although no taller than a telephone box, it is the most assertive tomb to be designed by a British architect for his own use. It is a masterpiece of multum in parvo — or, as Soane’s assistant said of his master’s Museum, ‘a conglomerate of vast ideas in little’. Previous studies have tended to evaluate the structure in the context of Soane’s architectural style, as an extreme expression of a highly personal manner. Studied in the context of the Georgian churchyard its design is even more startling: it was the boldest, subtlest, and most perplexing tomb in London. Soane broke every rule in the highly conventional language of churchyard commemoration, prefiguring the bombastic exuberance of the Kensal Green necropolis by two decades.
1 George Wightwick, an assistant in 1826-27, whose recollections are reprinted by Bolton, Arthur in The Portrait of Sir John Soane (1923), p. 396 Google Scholar.
2 See Palmer, Susan, The Soanes at Home (1997), pp. 79–80 Google Scholar, for a description of her illness, her death, and her funeral.
3 Brown, W. E., St Paneras Open Spaces and Disused Burial Grounds (1902), p. 42 Google Scholar.
4 See Bowdler, Roger, ‘“Wisdom’s School”: London’s Pre-Victorian Cemeteries’ in The London Gardener, 1 (1995), pp. 25–32 Google Scholar.
5 The wall was demolished when the two burial grounds were amalgamated as St Paneras Gardens in 1877.
6 Recording drawing and site plan in Soane Museum, hereafter SM (63/7/2).
7 C. A. J. Mason, , A Sketch of the History of Old St Paneras Church and its Graveyard (Waynflete Society, 1867), p. 26 Google Scholar.
8 MrsHolmes, Basil, The London Burial Grounds (1896), p. 102 Google Scholar.
9 London Metropolitan Archives, P82/GEO/65: St George’s Bloomsbury, rough burial register 1814-27.
10 For a broader discussion of churchyard monuments see Bowdler, Roger ‘ Et in Arcadia Ego: The Neoclassical Tomb 1760-1840’ in Waterfield, Giles (ed.), Soane and Death (1996), pp. 26–44 Google Scholar.
11 SirColvin, Howard, Architecture and the Afterlife (1991), p. 333 Google Scholar.
12 Payment to the mason Thomas Grandy. The total cost of his contract was £425 2s. 8d. (SM Private Correspondence XIV.C.1.20). The bill from the bricklayer, Thomas Poynder & Son, came to £107 18s. 6d.
13 Letter to Soane of June 1816 quoted in Bolton, Arthur T., The Portrait of Sir John Soane (n.d. [1923]), p. 221 Google Scholar.
14 According to Dr Eric Robinson of the London Geological Society the tomb to Anne Gibson (d. 1827) in St George’s Gardens, Bloomsbury, is one of the very earliest appearances of an outdoor marble tomb in London.
15 Writing in 1805: see Bowdler (1996), p. 29.
16 Soane Notebooks (SNB), 11 February 1816: ‘Mr Eliason at 12 / At home the rest of the day about Monument &c / Mr & Mrs Hoftland dined here…’
17 SirSummerson, John, ‘Sir John Soane and the Furniture of Death’ in The Unromantic Castle (1990), p. 136 Google Scholar.
18 Ibid., p. 134.
19 Curl, James Stevens, The Art and Architecture of Freemasonry (1991), p. 211 Google Scholar.
20 Woodward, Christopher, ‘William Beckford and Fonthill Splendens’, Apollo (February 1998), pp. 31–40 Google Scholar. The Picture Gallery at Fonthill was not executed.
21 SM Journal No.4 (1717-1804), fol. 339.
22 1952 photographs in the NMR show the monument intact. Its subsequent dismantling is a considerable loss.
23 de Cayeux, Jean, Hubert Robert et les Jardins (Paris, 1987), pp. 128-29Google Scholar.
24 For a discussion of Rousseau’s influence on Soane see Watkin, David, Sir John Soane: Enlightenment Tltought and the Royal Academy Lectures (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 7–8 Google Scholar and passim.
25 For Rousseau’s tomb at Ermenonville see ibid., p. 100.
26 The first drawing to show this is SM 63/7/29, dated 12 March 1816.
27 SNB 19 February 1816 ‘…Pd for addt. Land at Paneras 37.16.0.’
28 Colvin (1991), p. 360.
29 Watkin (1996).
30 Summerson (1990), p. 137.
31 From Lecture IV, quoted in Watkin (1996), p. 547.
32 Ibid., pp. 267-68 for a discussion of d’Hancarville’s influence.
33 Colvin (1991), p. 360.
34 Cockerell was writing in 1858; quoted in Abramson, Daniel, ‘Cockerell’s “Architectural Progress of the Bank of England”’, Architectural History, 37 (1994), p. 125 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Soane’s Rotunda at the Bank was built in 1795.
35 Colvin (1991), p. 360.
36 Summerson (1990), p. 138. Soane displayed Campanella’s coloured engravings of the Villa Negroni murals in the Breakfast Room of No. 13 Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
37 A suggestion by Ptolemy Dean; oral communication.
38 Its first appearance was in the 3% Consols Office of 1798.
39 The church was destroyed by enemy action in 1940. Soane’s designs for monuments are catalogued in Giles Waterfield, Soane and Death (1996).
40 George Withers, A Collection of Emblemes, Ancient and Modern (1635), fols 102 & 157.
41 Mowl, Tim, John Wood (Bath, 1988), pp. 56–58 Google Scholar. Wood incorporated several ouroboroi in the frieze above the ground-floor windows of the King’s Circus, Bath, designed in 1754. It is also to be seen in the 1732 monument to William Lytton Strode in the church at Knebworth, Hertfordshire: the serpent becomes a bowling hoop for a cherub.
42 See Waterfield (1996), p. 85. The column was erected by James Evelyn to honour his parents and in the 1920s was moved to Lemmington Hall, Northumberland. Soane also used this device to ornament the lantern in an unexecuted design for a new church at Tyringham, Buckinghamshire (1800). It would have served as a funerary chapel for the family of William Praed.
43 Quoted in Watkin (1996), p. 267.
44 Published in The European Magazine, LXXI (January-June 1817), p. 8.
45 Gittings, Claire, ‘Consolation and Condolence on the Death of Mrs Soane’, in Waterfield (1996), p. 45 Google Scholar.
46 SNB 1 December 1816.
47 The European Magazine…, LXXI (January-June 1817), pp. 7-8.
48 George wrote to Soane on 5 December 1827 to ‘request permission to lay your Grandchild by the side of her Grandmother, and her Uncle…’
49 A typical instance is Joseph Farington’s record of Henry Fuseli’s remark, made in 1808, on ‘Soane’s peevish and little mind expressed in a manner which might only have been expected from a Footman’. See Weinglass, David (ed.), The Collected English Letters of Henry Fuseli (1982), p. 364 Google Scholar.
50 Quoted in Robb, Graham, Victor Hugo (1996), p. 131 Google Scholar. For a discussion of the social character of Kensal Green see Chris Brooks, Mortal Remains (1989), pp. 10-15.
51 George Dance (d. 1825) was buried in St Paul’s Cathedral in recognition of his long service as Surveyor to the City Corporation ( Stroud, Dorothy, George Dance (1971), p. 228 Google Scholar). Robert Mylne (d. 1811) was buried close to Wren, as Surveyor to St Paul’s. Wyatt (d. 1813) is buried in the south transept of Westminster Abbey as Surveyor to the Fabric, and Wyatville (d. 1840) chose St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle ( Robinson, John Martin, The Wyatts (Oxford, 1979), p. 129 Google Scholar). Adam (d. 1792) and Chambers (d. 1796) are buried in Westminster Abbey.
John Wood (d. 1754) was buried at Swainswick, near Bath, commanding that no more than £20 should be spent on his tomb (Tim Mowl (1988), p. 210). Taiman (d. 1719) is in the churchyard of Felmingham, Norfolk ( Harris, John, William Taiman (1982), p. 20 Google Scholar). James Gibbs (d. 1754) was buried in the parish church of Marylebone ( Friedman, Terry, James Gibbs (New Haven, 1984), pp. 18–20 Google Scholar). Hawksmoor is buried at Shenley, Hertfordshire ( Downes, Kerry, Nicholas Hawksmoor (1979), pp. 6–7 Google Scholar). Holland (d. 1806) shared the tomb he designed for his parents in All Saints’, Fulham ( Stroud, Dorothy, Henry Holland (1966), p. 152 Google Scholar). Wilkins chose the chapel of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge ( Liscombe, R. W., William Wilkins (Cambridge, 1980), p. 232 Google Scholar). John Nash is the churchyard of East Cowes, Isle of Wight ( Summerson, , John Nash (1980), pp. 188–89Google Scholar) and it was rumoured that he was buried at night to escape angry creditors who were keen to arrest his corpse.
52 Waterfield, Giles, ‘Dulwich Picture Gallery: An Artists’ Shrine?’ in Waterfield (1996), pp. 53–69 Google Scholar.
53 See Helen Dorey and Peter Thornton, A Miscellany of Objects at Sir John Soane’s Museum (1992).
54 Ibid., p. 77.
55 An extract from Soane’s Act is quoted in A New Description of Sir John Soane’s Museum (1991 ed.), Appendix II, p. 81.
56 A Description of Sir John Soane’s Museum (1835 ed.), p. 46.
57 Dorey and Thornton (1992), p. 94. The Trustees’ Minutes of 27 February 1837 record the description of the installation by Maria Denman, sister-in-law of John Flaxman and donor of the statuette: ‘The original Italian Plaster Cast of an antique Victory, brought from Rome by J. Flaxman and fixed on the Bookcase in front of the Drawing of Mrs Soane’s Tomb under the immediate direction of Sir John Soane on January 10th 1837’.
58 Reply recorded in SM Trustees’ Minutes, 25 July 1870.