The Soane Museum £7m refurbishment

Opening Up The Soane

Watercolour c. 1825 showing views of the original Model Room on the second floor of No.13. This will be one of eight rooms to be restored as part of Opening up the Soane. "Opening up the Soane" is a new, £7M project aims to restore, refurbish and improve Sir John Soane's Museum.

Thanks to the recent restoration of No.14 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, the Museum can now restore an entire 2nd floor of No.13; comprising an ensemble of exquisite and intriguing rooms. These include Soane’s private apartments: bedroom, bathroom, oratory, book passage and Mrs Soane's Morning Room and the Model Room above. Other spaces include the Tivoli and Shakespeare recesses.
"Opening up the Soane" includes other improvements such as improved visitor facilities, the creation of a new Exhibition Gallery and Conservation Studios, and improvements that will allow full disabled access to the Museum. These changes will enable the Museum to show more of its collections, and to look after them better - retaining and enhancing the special atmosphere of this unique museum. Phase 1 will be completed in 2012 and the entire project will be completed by 2014. It is an ambitious and complex project that will make the Soane an even better Museum for all its visitors to enjoy.

for more on the Soane and this project go to www.soane.org

  Sir John Soane, R.A., architect.

Soane was born in 1753, the son of a bricklayer, and died after a long and distinguished career, in 1837.

Soane designed his house  in Lincoln's Inn to live in, but also as a setting for his antiquities and his works of art. After the death of his wife (1815), he lived there alone, constantly adding to and rearranging his collections. Having been deeply disappointed by the conduct of his two sons, one of whom survived him, he determined to establish the house as a museum to which ‘amateurs and students’ should have access.

In 1833 Soane negotiated an Act of Parliament to settle and preserve the house and collection for the benefit of ‘amateurs and students’ in architecture, painting and sculpture. On his death in 1837 the Act came into force, vesting the Museum in a board of Trustees who were to continue to uphold Soane’s own aims and objectives. A crucial part of their brief was to maintain the fabric of the Museum, keeping it ‘as nearly as circumstances will admit in the state’ in which it was left at the time of Soane’s death in 1837 and to allow free access for students and the public to ‘consult, inspect and benefit’ from the collections. Since 1837, each successive Curator has sought to preserve and maintain Soane’s arrangements as he wished. However, over the years changes have been made and the recent Five-Year Restoration programme has sought to restore Soane’s arrangements and effects where they had been lost.