Sir John Soane's Museum — The Eccentric Genius
Sir John Soane's Museum in London, located at Lincoln's Inn Fields, is a house museum showcasing the architect's vast collection, including the 3,000-year-old alabaster sarcophagus of Pharaoh Seti I. Sir John Soane acquired three townhouses starting in 1792, filling them with 30,000 drawings, Hogarth paintings, and antiquities. In 1833, Soane passed an Act of Parliament disinheriting his son and leaving the museum to the nation.
London · from the walk “Secrets of Lincoln's Inn Fields” · audio ~3 min · Generated
Sir John Soane's Museum, 13 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3BP
- Sir John Soane was born in 1753 and served as the architect of the Bank of England for 45 years.
- Sir John Soane bought the 3,000-year-old alabaster sarcophagus of Pharaoh Seti I for £2,000 after the British Museum declined.
- In 1815, George Soane published anonymous newspaper articles attacking his father's architecture, causing his mother's heartbroken death.
- Sir John Soane secured an 1833 Act of Parliament to leave his townhouses and 30,000 drawings to the nation.
Why did Sir John Soane leave Sir John Soane's Museum in London to the nation instead of his son?
You are standing before number thirteen, Lincoln's Inn Fields... the home of a man who rose from nothing, built one of the most important buildings in British history, and then declared War on his own son.......... Sir John Soane was born in seventeen fifty-three, the son of a bricklayer. Through sheer talent and determination, he won the Royal Academy's Gold Medal for Architecture, earned a bursary from King George the Third, and set off on a Grand Tour of Italy. The ruins of ancient Rome and Pompeii changed him forever.......... He became architect of the Bank of England, a post he held for forty-five years. But his True obsession was this place. He bought number twelve in seventeen ninety-two, then number thirteen, then number fourteen... knocking through walls, adding skylights and mirrors, filling every surface with antiquities until the three houses became one glorious, bewildering Labyrinth.......... And his greatest treasure? A three-thousand-year-old alabaster sarcophagus of the Pharaoh Seti the First! The British Museum had Refused to pay the two thousand pound asking price. So Soane snapped it up... and threw a three-day party to celebrate, inviting the cream of London society to view it by lamplight, the translucent stone Glowing from candles placed inside.......... But behind this brilliance lay a family tragedy. His son George, a reckless spender who'd been imprisoned for debt, anonymously published vicious articles in The Champion newspaper in eighteen fifteen, attacking his own father's architecture. When Soane's beloved wife Eliza read them, she reportedly said... "He has given me my death blow. I shall never hold up my head again." She died weeks later. Heartbroken, Soane framed those newspaper cuttings and hung them on the wall with the label: "Death blows given by George Soane."
...... His revenge was extraordinary. In eighteen thirty-three, he pushed a private Act of Parliament through the House of Commons to leave Everything... the houses, the sarcophagus, the thirty thousand drawings, the Hogarth paintings... to the nation. His son George even petitioned Parliament to stop it, enlisting the radical MP William Cobbett, but failed.......... And here is a final eccentric touch. Before he died, Soane sealed his personal bathtub with instructions that it should not be opened for decades. When the great day finally came... they lifted the lid and found nothing but old paperwork and lottery tickets. A last joke from beyond the grave.......... One more thing. The tomb Soane designed for Eliza in Old Saint Pancras churchyard, with its distinctive domed canopy... is said to have inspired Sir Giles Gilbert Scott's design for the iconic red telephone box. So every time you see one of those K-two kiosks across London, you are looking at a monument born from an architect's grief.
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