3-101-130 - "Royal Academy of Arts, London"/Heritage Images

Ashburnham House - The Staircase, c1882. Seventeenth-century house on Little Dean's Yard in Westminster, London. 'The Staircase, the most remarkable feature of the house, has always been deservedly admired for the ingenuity of its plan and the beauty of its design. It is surmounted, as Batty Langley states, by way of an oval dome and lantern. Sir John Soane had some very large drawings made of the Staircase, in illustration of his lectures at the Royal Academy. In more than one passage of these lectures he speaks in terms of high praise of the Staircase. The drawings and manuscript lectures are preserved in the Soane Museum. There are also in the Library of the Royal Institute of British Architects carefully measured drawings of this Staircase, and engravings of it are given in Britton and Pugin's Public Buildings of London'. Description by Alfred Marks. Ashburnham House is now part of Westminster School.