Capital Soane.

SIR JOHN SOANE AND LONDON

By Ptolemy Dean. Aldershot: Lund Humphries. 2006. [pounds sterling]40

John Soane must be the most popular historic architect in Britain, so it is remarkable that there is anything new to say or find out about him, but Soane books, some very good, continue to appear. Ptolemy Dean's Sir John Soane and London is the latest, a companion to Dean's Sir John Soane and the Country Estate (1999). Both books are organised in the same way, with descriptive chapters on the main works and a gazetteer of all the London jobs recorded in the Soane archives at the Museum: unbuilt, destroyed and still extant. Dean has gone to great pains to investigate on the ground references to jobs in the London area that vary from surveys and alterations to massive works for the Bank of England and the Law Courts.

His results reveal much about the nature of practice at the turn of the eighteenth century. Until he was preoccupied by the great buildings, Soane would rush across London to investigate minor defects or the potential of putting in a new bow window. On occasion, he was required to act as a cross between tailor and banker by paying the contractors and then having to claim their costs in his own fees, which could be paid very late. But, as Dean explains, small works often led to bigger commissions from the same clients, even to country houses. Much of the bittyness of the London work was a result of the leasehold system which the great estates used to prevent being gradually broken up. The rich would take a house for a few years, perhaps modify it a little, then move on. Dean has searched out even surviving fragments of long demolished houses.

Though Soane, the bricklayer's son, thought that he was badly treated by the establishment, his surveyorships to the Bank and the Chelsea Hospital provided him with financial stability in his later years. His very success led to the destruction of some of the great works. They were for the richest and the most powerful individuals and institutions in the land which remained powerful long after his death and, over the generations, needed changes to their buildings.

The book is beautifully illustrated with evocative black and white photographs by Martin Charles, often of little-known places such as the Downing Street interiors. And it has coloured freehand drawings by the author. For all his manifold talents as architect, historian, writer and television presenter, Dean is not the ideal illustrator of Soane's architecture. His command of tricky perspective is good, but his line is so frenetically wobbly that the buildings appear to be experiencing the first stages of an earthquake--very different from their calm and luminous reality. Still, that should not detract from the scholarly achievement of the latest addition to the Soane canon.