Soane's earliest works (commissions and competitions) date from 1777. The first was his design, while in Henry Holland's office, for a farmyard at Cadland, Hampshire.  In the same year he submitted two designs in the competition for a new St Luke's Hospital for Lunatics, London.  Soane was abroad from March 1778.  In Rome he met the Bishop of Derry (later 4th Earl of Bristol) and there are three designs by Soane for Downhill, Co. Derry, two of which (to his intense disappointment) came to nothing. Returning home in June 1780, some of Soane's earliest commissions were for other Grand Tourists that he had met while abroad (see Allanbank, Berwickshire and Castle Eden, Co.Durham).  In 1781 (in an unacknowledged association with George Dance) Soane entered a competition for two model prisons.  Stylistically, perhaps the most remarkable design of these early years was that for a dairy at Hammels Park, Hertfordshire (1783) in a primitive, rustic style that again, owes something to George Dance.