The mausoleum is surrounded by railings so it is not
possible to walk right up to it. A plaque, on the railings, tells us:
The Soane Mausoleum
This Grade I listed mausoleum was designed by Sir John
Soane, the celebrated architect of the Bank of England (188-1830), the Dulwich
Picture Gallery 1811-14) and Holy Trinity Church on Marylebone Road (1824-8).
The mausoleum was erected in 1816 following his wife's death in 1815 and
entombs his wife and son as well as himself.
The 'outstandingly interesting monument... extremely
Soanesque with all his originality and all his foibles' (Nikolaus Pevsner)
bears testimony to the importance of the structure. The central marble cube
has four faces for dedicatory inscriptions, enclosed by a marble canopy
supported on four Ionic columns. Enclosing this central structure is a stone
balustrade with a flight of steps down into the vault itself. The understated
classicism of the design is widely seen as one of Soane's most inventive
creations and the central domed structure influenced Sir Giles Gilbert Scott's
design of the K2 and subsequent telephone kiosks. It is one of only two Grade
I listed monuments in London (the other being Karl Marx's tomb in
Highgate).
Following vandalism in 1869 it was suggested that it
should be relocated to the safety of Lincoln's Inn Fields. It was restored in
1996 by the Soane Monuments Trust and following further vandalism, restoration
was carried out in 2000-01 as part of the London Borough of Camden's major
restoration of St Pancras Gardens, supported by the Heritage Lottery
Fund.
As mentioned above, the mausoleum is Grade I listed and the
entry at the English Heritage website [visit
link] tells us:
"Tomb. Erected 1816 and designed by Sir John Soane in
memory of his wife who died in 1815. Portland stone. Rectangular plan. Tomb
comprises central domed structure supported on 4 panelled piers with ornamented
capitals covering a pedimented structure on 4 Ionic columns in a decorative
style of Soane's own invention, each side filled with an inscribed slab.
Balustraded enclosure sets out north, south and east of central structure with
staircase approach down at west end to sealed basement vault. Dome with open
spandrels having wavy line ornament to face, topped by a small drum banded by a
snake (with tail in mouth) surmounted by a pineapple. Balustraded enclosure with
panelled dies at ends and corners surmounted by stele, those attendant to the
central part of the monument with weepers in niches and triple stele. Some stone
balusters later replaced in terracotta.
HISTORICAL NOTE: the design of the central domed
structure influenced Giles Gilbert Scott's design of the K2 and subsequent
telephone boxes."
The Frieze Magazine website [visit
link] has a lighthearted article about the mausoleum:
"London’s Sir John Soane Museum is a secret everyone
seems to know about. Tucked away in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, the Regency
architect’s house is a perfect junk-shop, crammed with paintings by William
Hogarth and fragments of Gothic cathedrals, an Apollo Belvedere and a varnished
human skull. Though it was completed in 1813, the building’s not quite of its
time. Kurt Schwitters would have liked it, and so would Jorge Luis Borges. It’s
a good place for second dates. Maybe someone’s taken you there.
Soane’s mausoleum is a different prospect. Beached in a
maudlin park behind Kings Cross Station, it’s the kind of secret you stumble
across by accident when you decide – for no particular reason – to walk home by
a different route. At first I didn’t realize that it was a tomb. With its jolly
Classicism and petticoat of overgrown grass, the mausoleum looks more like the
final hole on a crazy-golf course. The vertiginous steps are a giveaway though,
tumbling into the ground at an impossibly sharp angle. This might have filled me
with a sense of foreboding, but Soane’s tomb is more about a headlong rush
through life than a gloomy plunge into the hereafter. Although the structure’s
not much bigger than a suburban conservatory, it’s crammed with an enormous
amount of architectural detail, a whole Parthenon’s worth of creamy-coloured
columns. At its four corners Soane placed some fugitive Ionic capitals; on the
tomb they’ve become petrified waves, liquid energy turned into
stone.
Despite its gloomy setting, Soane’s mausoleum feels
hopeful – about life, death and the possibilities of architecture. Having built
it in 1816 to house the body of his wife, Elizabeth, Soane slipped in beside her
in 1837. Few people visit their own grave before they die; fewer still design it
themselves. I’ve a hunch, though, that something rather special happened during
the widower’s visits to the mausoleum. Nikolaus Pevsner wrote that the 19th
century ‘forgot about Soane’, but by the 20th century architects were revisiting
his legacy. Sir Giles Gilbert Scott based the roof of K2, the first red
telephone kiosk, around the stone canopy of Soane’s tomb. Perhaps Scott
understood that graves are about communicating with our dead as well as mourning
them, and maybe that’s why Soane’s mausoleum seems so oddly cheerful. It’s good,
after all, to talk."