IDENTITY STATEMENT
Reference code(s): COL/SVD/PL
Held at: London Metropolitan Archives
Title: SURVEYOR'S DEPARTMENT: PLANS
Date(s): 1736-1980
Level of description: Collection
Extent: 47.9 linear metres
Name of creator(s): Corporation of London
CONTEXT
Administrative/Biographical history:
The City Surveyor is responsible for the construction and management of various City non-residential properties, including those properties belonging to Bridge House estates and City Lands estates.
The Surveyor's Approval Plans are a series of folders containing plans, and sometimes supporting correspondence and specifications of works associated with the Corporation's role as landlord to the City Lands and Bridge House Estates. The plans mostly relate to alterations or new building on the Bridge House and City Lands Estates which were submitted to the Bridge House and City Lands Committees respectively for approval and very occasionally to property adjoining the Corporation's estate over which the Corporation enjoyed certain rights such as the right to light. The plans were drawn by the leasee's own architects and usually submitted with a covering letter to the relevant committee as part of their application for permission to redevelop or alter Corporation property. The application was studied by the City Architect who made a recommendation in a report to the committee to accept or reject the application. The report can usually be found in the relevant file of committee papers and the subsequent decision in the appropriate committee minutes. Occasionally the City Architect would recommend conditions and modifications to be imposed on the leasee's proposal and such conditions can sometimes found in the committee papers and in the committee files after 1958. Most of the plans submitted were for relatively minor alterations such as new room partitions, however many plans related to completely new buildings or major reconstructions of existing buildings. Most of the plans are signed and dated by the leasee's architects. Not all the proposed new building and alterations contained in the plans were carried out and sometimes this was annotated on the folder or on the plans themselves as well other facts such as the subsequent demolition or sale of the site.
CONTENT
Scope and content/abstract:
Plans from the Surveyor's Department, Corporation of London, 1736-1980, including plans, maps, diagrams, photographs, sections and elevations of offices, stables, warehouses, public houses and wine bars, vaults and basements, shops, workshops, banks, dwelling houses, police stations, schools, markets, restaurants, wharves, docks, railway stations and railway lines, drains and conduits, churches and churchyards, pavilions, memorials, streets, almshouses, cemeteries, courts, hospitals, asylums, parks and hotels, as well as the Guildhall complex and Mansion House. These include properties belonging to Bridge House Estates, the Conduit Mead estate and City Lands Estates. Also maps of parish and ward boundaries.
Plans of bridges, 1745-1941, including London Bridge, Tower Bridge, Waterloo Bridge, Southwark Bridge, St Paul's Bridge and Blackfriars Bridge, with soundings of the Thames, 1774-1879.
ACCESS AND USE
Language/scripts of material: English
System of arrangement:
In sections according to catalogue.
Conditions governing access:
Available for general access.
Conditions governing reproduction:
Copyright: City of London
Physical characteristics:
Fit
Finding aids:
Please see online catalogues at: http://search.lma.gov.uk/opac_lma/index.htm
ARCHIVAL INFORMATION
Appraisal, destruction and scheduling information:
Accruals:
Archival history:
Immediate source of acquisition:
Corporation of London Records Office.
ALLIED MATERIALS
Existence and location of originals:
Existence and location of copies:
Related material:
For more plans see general plans (COL/PL), the papers of the Public Health Department (COL/PHD), the papers of the Planning Department (COL/PLD), and the papers of the Technical Services Department (COL/TSD).
Publication note:
DESCRIPTION NOTES
Note:
Date(s) of descriptions: February 2009