Soane, SIR JOHN, an English architect, born of humble parentage at Reading on 10th September 1753. He managed to get trained as an architect, and, having gained the travelling scholarship of the Royal Academy, spent three years (1777-80) in Italy. After his return home he secured several official appointments—e.g. architect to the Bank of England, St James's Palace, Office of Woods and Forests—and was elected professor of Architecture at the Royal Academy (1806). He designed numerous country-houses in the eastern counties and parts of public buildings (Bank of England) in London, showing in his plans considerable ingenuity, but an uncertain taste, and frequently a lack of harmony in his completed plans. At his death, in London on 20th January 1837, he bequeathed his own house in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and the valuable art and antiquarian museum it contained, including pictures by Hogarth, Reynolds, Turner, models by Flaxman, the MS. of Tasso's Gcrusalemme Liberata, &c., to the nation. He published amongst other books a set of folio plates of Public and Private Buildings (1828), and a Description (1832) of his own house and museum.
See the Memoir by J. Britton (1834), and the Art Journal (1882).