There's No Place like Soane

Stockley, Philippa, The Evening Standard (London, England)

Byline: PHILIPPA STOCKLEY

IF YOU want to make a New Year's design resolution, then visit "the Soane" - properly called Sir John Soane's Museum. Tucked away in Lincoln's Inn Fields, five minutes' walk from Holborn Tube, are two-and-a-bit interconnecting 18th century houses so full of astonishing things you will have to go back at least a second time to take it all in.

Sir John Soane was a brilliant, innovative architect. With boundless curiosity and a very successful practice, he was frequently ahead of his time.

Born the son of a bricklayer in 1753, with slim prospects, he fell into architecture by chance, tagged an "e" onto the end of his name, had a Architect Sir John Soane's ideas of space and light were centuries ahead of their time. With the Soane Museum celebrating his 250th anniversary, Philippa Stockley looks at his designs for London living, and launches our Adopt A Courtyard appeal "Sir" added to the front when he was knighted in 1831, and ended up with a healthy bank balance - a perfect example of the self-made man from whom there is much to learn.

When he wasn't building the Bank of England, or numerous country houses, or designing bridges, he was putting together his own masterpiece home in Lincoln's Inn Fields.

He built Number 12, then 13, and finally 14 (which was mainly rented out).

He then filled the linked houses, year by year, with a mindboggling collection of statuary, casts, artefacts and paintings.

As his home grew around him, crammed to …

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Publication information: Article title: There's No Place like Soane. Contributors: Stockley, Philippa - Author. Newspaper title: The Evening Standard (London, England). Publication date: January 22, 2003. Page number: Not available. © Not available. COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group.

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