English country house contents auctions
Encyclopedia
English country house contents auctions are usually held on site at the country house
, and have been used to raise funds for their owners, usually before selling the house and estate. Such auctions include the sale of high quality antique paintings, furniture
, objet d'art, tapestries, books and other household items.
The main auctioneers coordinating these sales are Sotheby's
, Christie's
and Lyon & Turnbull
, with other auctions conducted by Bonhams
and Lawrence's. A high quality auction catalog
is also published, giving details and photographs of the lots, including provenance
, technical descriptions and estimated sale price ranges. These catalogs can also become collectables in their own right.
The largest on-site contents auction to date, by proceeds value, is Viscount Leverhulme
's Thornton Manor
near Liverpool, raising over £9.5 million in 2001. However, in present day values, the largest is still probably the Earl of Rosebery
's Mentmore Towers
in Buckinghamshire, which generated over £6 million in 1977. The Wentworth Woodhouse
£15 million auction in 1998 is excluded because the items had not been in situ in the house prior to the auction, and they were not auctioned at the house, but rather in Christie’s London auction rooms. However, all these figures are occasionally eclipsed by the one-off sale of a special painting or drawing (not listed here), such as the private sale of Castle Howard
's Sir Joshua Reynolds
"Portrait of Omai" to the Tate Britain
for £12.5 million in March 2003, and Alnwick Castle
's sale of Raphael
's "Madonna of the Pinks
" to the National Gallery, London
for £35 million in 2004.
Below is a list, in reverse chronology, of the most significant country house auctions, including those in Scotland, Wales and Ireland (if not specifically stated, the house is in England). Also listed are the number of days the auction took to complete (in brackets), the name of the auction house, the gross auction proceeds and the total number of sale lots, if the information is available.
English country house
The English country house is a large house or mansion in the English countryside. Such houses were often owned by individuals who also owned a London house. This allowed to them to spend time in the country and in the city—hence, for these people, the term distinguished between town and country...
, and have been used to raise funds for their owners, usually before selling the house and estate. Such auctions include the sale of high quality antique paintings, furniture
Furniture
Furniture is the mass noun for the movable objects intended to support various human activities such as seating and sleeping in beds, to hold objects at a convenient height for work using horizontal surfaces above the ground, or to store things...
, objet d'art, tapestries, books and other household items.
The main auctioneers coordinating these sales are Sotheby's
Sotheby's
Sotheby's is the world's fourth oldest auction house in continuous operation.-History:The oldest auction house in operation is the Stockholms Auktionsverk founded in 1674, the second oldest is Göteborgs Auktionsverk founded in 1681 and third oldest being founded in 1731, all Swedish...
, Christie's
Christie's
Christie's is an art business and a fine arts auction house.- History :The official company literature states that founder James Christie conducted the first sale in London, England, on 5 December 1766, and the earliest auction catalogue the company retains is from December 1766...
and Lyon & Turnbull
Lyon & Turnbull
Lyon & Turnbull is a privately owned international auction house based in Scotland. Founded in 1826, it is Scotland’s oldest auction house; the largest independent auction house in the United Kingdom outside of London and one of the fastest growing auction houses in the UK.The firm has its...
, with other auctions conducted by Bonhams
Bonhams
Bonhams is a privately owned British auction house founded in 1793. It is the third largest auctioneer after Sotheby's and Christie's, and conducts around 700 auctions per year. It has 700 employees....
and Lawrence's. A high quality auction catalog
Auction catalog
An auction catalog or auction catalogue is a catalogue that lists items to be sold at an auction which is written and made available well before the auction date...
is also published, giving details and photographs of the lots, including provenance
Provenance
Provenance, from the French provenir, "to come from", refers to the chronology of the ownership or location of an historical object. The term was originally mostly used for works of art, but is now used in similar senses in a wide range of fields, including science and computing...
, technical descriptions and estimated sale price ranges. These catalogs can also become collectables in their own right.
The largest on-site contents auction to date, by proceeds value, is Viscount Leverhulme
Viscount Leverhulme
Viscount Leverhulme, of the Western Isles in the Counties of Inverness and Ross and Cromarty, was a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom created in 1922 for the industrialist and philanthropist William Lever, 1st Baron Leverhulme...
's Thornton Manor
Thornton Manor
Thornton Manor is a large house in the village of Thornton Hough, Wirral, England. It has been designated by English Heritage as a Grade II listed building. The house was first built in the middle of the 19th century and has been altered and extended in a number of phases since...
near Liverpool, raising over £9.5 million in 2001. However, in present day values, the largest is still probably the Earl of Rosebery
Earl of Rosebery
Earl of Rosebery is a title in the Peerage of Scotland. It was created in 1703 for Archibald Primrose, 1st Viscount of Rosebery, with remainder to his issue male and female successively...
's Mentmore Towers
Mentmore Towers
Mentmore Towers is a 19th century English country house in the village of Mentmore in Buckinghamshire. The house was designed by Joseph Paxton and his son-in-law, George Henry Stokes, in the revival Elizabethan and Jacobean style of the late 16th century called Jacobethan, for the banker and...
in Buckinghamshire, which generated over £6 million in 1977. The Wentworth Woodhouse
Wentworth Woodhouse
Wentworth Woodhouse is a Grade I listed country house near the village of Wentworth, in the vicinity of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England. "One of the great Whig political palaces", its East Front, long, is the longest country house façade in Europe. The house includes 365 rooms and covers an...
£15 million auction in 1998 is excluded because the items had not been in situ in the house prior to the auction, and they were not auctioned at the house, but rather in Christie’s London auction rooms. However, all these figures are occasionally eclipsed by the one-off sale of a special painting or drawing (not listed here), such as the private sale of Castle Howard
Castle Howard
Castle Howard is a stately home in North Yorkshire, England, north of York. One of the grandest private residences in Britain, most of it was built between 1699 and 1712 for the 3rd Earl of Carlisle, to a design by Sir John Vanbrugh...
's Sir Joshua Reynolds
Joshua Reynolds
Sir Joshua Reynolds RA FRS FRSA was an influential 18th-century English painter, specialising in portraits and promoting the "Grand Style" in painting which depended on idealization of the imperfect. He was one of the founders and first President of the Royal Academy...
"Portrait of Omai" to the Tate Britain
Tate Britain
Tate Britain is an art gallery situated on Millbank in London, and part of the Tate gallery network in Britain, with Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It is the oldest gallery in the network, opening in 1897. It houses a substantial collection of the works of J. M. W. Turner.-History:It...
for £12.5 million in March 2003, and Alnwick Castle
Alnwick Castle
Alnwick Castle is a castle and stately home in the town of the same name in the English county of Northumberland. It is the residence of the Duke of Northumberland, built following the Norman conquest, and renovated and remodelled a number of times. It is a Grade I listed building.-History:Alnwick...
's sale of Raphael
Raphael
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino , better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur...
's "Madonna of the Pinks
Madonna of the Pinks
The Madonna of the Pinks is an early devotional painting usually attributed to Italian Renaissance master Raphael. It is painted in oils on fruitwood and now hangs in the National Gallery, London....
" to the National Gallery, London
National Gallery, London
The National Gallery is an art museum on Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The gallery is an exempt charity, and a non-departmental public body of the Department for Culture, Media...
for £35 million in 2004.
Below is a list, in reverse chronology, of the most significant country house auctions, including those in Scotland, Wales and Ireland (if not specifically stated, the house is in England). Also listed are the number of days the auction took to complete (in brackets), the name of the auction house, the gross auction proceeds and the total number of sale lots, if the information is available.
Contents auctions (in reverse chronology)
- 2010 Oct 05 - Oct 07 (3) — Chatsworth HouseChatsworth HouseChatsworth House is a stately home in North Derbyshire, England, northeast of Bakewell and west of Chesterfield . It is the seat of the Duke of Devonshire, and has been home to his family, the Cavendish family, since Bess of Hardwick settled at Chatsworth in 1549.Standing on the east bank of the...
, Derbyshire, Attic Sale, including some former contents of Devonshire HouseDevonshire HouseDevonshire House in Piccadilly was the London residence of the Dukes of Devonshire in the 18th and 19th centuries. It was built for William Cavendish, 3rd Duke of Devonshire in the Palladian style, to designs by William Kent...
, London (Sotheby’s, 1,416 lots, £5.3 million) - 2009 Oct 13 - Oct 13 (1) — Dutton Homestall, West Sussex, contents of Stoke Brunswick SchoolStoke Brunswick SchoolStoke Brunswick School was a small co-educational day and boarding independent school for children aged 3 to 13 years, situated in Ashurst Wood, West Sussex, near the town of East Grinstead. It was the former junior school , of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill...
(resident from 1958), formerly home of Lords DewarThomas Dewar, 1st Baron DewarThomas Robert "Tommy" Dewar, 1st Baron Dewar was a Scottish whisky distiller who, along with his brother John Dewar, built their family label, Dewar's, into an international success...
and ForteviotJohn Dewar, 1st Baron ForteviotJohn Alexander Dewar, 1st Baron Forteviot was a Scottish businessman, elder son of the founder of Dewar's Scotch Whisky and a Liberal Member of Parliament.-Family:...
(Lambert & Foster, Batcheller Thacker, under £1m, 850 lots) - 2008 Jun 18 & Jun 24 (2) — Woolbeding House, West Sussex, collection of Simon Sainsbury, proceeds to the Monument Trust (Christie’s, £29.6 million, 374 lots in 3 auctions, items not in situ, sold in London)
- 2007 Oct 08 – Oct 09 (2) — Newton SurmavilleNewton SurmavilleNewton Surmaville is a small park and house south of Yeovil, Somerset in the district of South Somerset, in England. It lies just outside the town in the parish of Barwick.- House :...
, Somerset (Lawrence's, about 900 lots) - 2007 July 12 - July 13 (2) — Dumfries HouseDumfries HouseDumfries House is a Palladian country house in Ayrshire, Scotland. It is located within a large estate, around 3 km west of Cumnock. It was built in the 1750s by John Adam and Robert Adam for William Dalrymple, 5th Earl of Dumfries, and inherited in due course by the Marquesses of Bute, in...
, East Ayrshire, Scotland (Christie's, sold privately 2 weeks before auction, est. £12-£14m) - 2007 June 01 – June 3 (3) — Loudham Hall, Suffolk (Lyon & Turnbull, £2.1m, about 2,000 lots, items only in situ post 1983)
- 2006 Oct 24 - Octo 24 (1) — Chanter’s HouseBaron ColeridgeBaron Coleridge, of Ottery St Mary in the County of Devon, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1874 for the prominent lawyer, judge and Liberal politician Sir John Coleridge. He served as Lord Chief Justice of England from 1880 to 1894...
, Devon, and items from FillongleyFillongleyFillongley is a village in the North Warwickshire district of the county of Warwickshire in England.The village is centred around the crossroads of the B4102 and the B4098 and Tamworth....
Hall, Warwickshire) (Sotheby's, £1,488,334, 492 lots) - 2006 Sep 19 - Sept 21 (3) — Shrubland ParkShrubland ParkShrubland Park stands on an abrupt glacial ridge in Suffolk, England overlooking the Gipping Valley between Ipswich and Needham Market.The first recorded owner was Robert de Shrubeland, although there is evidence of occupation on the site since the Roman period.The Grade II* listed hall was...
, Suffolk (Sotheby's, £4,518,784, up to 1,776 lots) - 2006 July 17 - July 18 (2) — Gyrn Castle, Wales, and items from Nantlys, Mostyn HallMostyn HallMostyn Hall is a large house near the village of Mostyn, Flintshire, Wales . It is a Grade I listed building.It is not known for how long a building has been present on the site, but since 1660 it has been the seat of the baronets of Mostyn, and since 1831, of the barons of Mostyn. In the...
, Capesthorne HallCapesthorne HallCapesthorne Hall is a country house in Cheshire, England. The house and its surrounding wall have been designated by English Heritage as a Grade II* listed building....
) (Christie’s, £1m, over 800 lots) - 2005 Jun 08 – June 08 (1) — Moundsmere Manor, HampshireHampshireHampshire is a county on the southern coast of England in the United Kingdom. The county town of Hampshire is Winchester, a historic cathedral city that was once the capital of England. Hampshire is notable for housing the original birthplaces of the Royal Navy, British Army, and Royal Air Force...
(Christie's, £361,632, 254 lots, sold in London) - 2005 May 17 - May 19 (3) — Easton NestonEaston NestonEaston Neston is a country house near Towcester, Northamptonshire, England, and is part of the Easton Neston Parish. It was designed in the Baroque style by the architect Nicholas Hawksmoor. Easton Neston is thought to be the only mansion which was solely the work of Hawksmoor...
, Northamptonshire (Sotheby's, £8,727,964, up to 1,574 lots) - 2005 May 04 – May 04 (1) — Pallinsburn HousePallinsburn HousePallinsburn House is an 18th-century country house situated at Ford, Northumberland. It is a Grade II* listed building.The house was built about 1763, in a Jacobean style originally with a three-storey frontage, for John Askew, , a younger son of Dr Adam Askew of Storrs Hall...
, Northumberland (& items from Sundrum Castle, Scotland) (Lyon & Turnbull) - 2005 January - January (1) — Hampton Court, Isle of ManIsle of ManThe Isle of Man , otherwise known simply as Mann , is a self-governing British Crown Dependency, located in the Irish Sea between the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, within the British Isles. The head of state is Queen Elizabeth II, who holds the title of Lord of Mann. The Lord of Mann is...
(Christie's, only in situ by David Style post 1978) - 2004 Jun 21 - June 21 (1) — Chirk CastleChirk CastleChirk Castle is a castle located at Chirk, Wrexham, Wales.The castle was built in 1295 by Roger Mortimer de Chirk, uncle of Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March as part of King Edward I's chain of fortresses across the north of Wales. It guards the entrance to the Ceiriog Valley...
, Wrexham, Wales (Christie's, £1.4 million, over 500 lots) - 2003 July 21 - July 22 (2) — Wormington Manor, Gloucestershire (Christie's, £1,359,894, up to 919 lots)
- 2002 Oct 08 - Octo 09 (2) — Fulbeck Hall, Lincolnshire (Christie's, £1,390,606, up to 609 lots)
- 2002 May 28 - May 30 (3) — Barnwell ManorBarnwell ManorBarnwell Manor is the historic former home of the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester. It is located by the village of Barnwell, near Oundle, Northamptonshire in England.-The house and estate:...
and Barnwell CastleBarnwell CastleBarnwell Castle is a ruined castle, south of the town of Oundle, and west of the village of Barnwell, Northamptonshire . It has been designated by English Heritage as a Grade I listed building, and is a Scheduled Ancient Monument....
, Northamptonshire (Sotheby's, £1,606,044, up to 1,493 lots) - 2002 April 11 - April 11 (1) — ScawbyScawbyScawby is a village and civil parish in North Lincolnshire, England. According to the 2001 census it had a population of 2,277. It is located south west of Brigg just off the A15 and A18. Scawby Brook, just outside Brigg, is also within the parish....
Hall, Lincolnshire (Sotheby's, £685,109, 322 lots) - 2001 Jun 26 - June 28 (3) — Thornton ManorThornton ManorThornton Manor is a large house in the village of Thornton Hough, Wirral, England. It has been designated by English Heritage as a Grade II listed building. The house was first built in the middle of the 19th century and has been altered and extended in a number of phases since...
, Merseyside (Sotheby's, £9,540,431, up to 1,287 lots) - 2000 May 09 - May 11 (3) — Benacre Hall, Suffolk (Sotheby's, £8,290,106, up to 1,691 lots)
- 1999 Oct 19 - Octo 20 (2) — Margam Park, Glamorgan, Wales (Sotheby's, £1,168,806, up to 870 lots)
- 1999 Oct 05 - Octo 05 (1) — Stansted ParkStansted ParkStansted Park is near the city of Chichester, West Sussex, England. It lies within the parish of Stoughton, near the village of Rowland's Castle over the border in Hampshire....
, Hampshire (Sotheby's, £1,294,544, 535 lots) - 1998 July 08 - July 08 (1) — Wentworth WoodhouseWentworth WoodhouseWentworth Woodhouse is a Grade I listed country house near the village of Wentworth, in the vicinity of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England. "One of the great Whig political palaces", its East Front, long, is the longest country house façade in Europe. The house includes 365 rooms and covers an...
, Yorkshire (Christie’s, £15,327,125, 92 lots, items not in situ, sold in London) - 1998 Apr 20 - April 22 (3) — Hackwood ParkSeymour Berry, 2nd Viscount CamroseJohn Seymour Berry, 2nd Viscount Camrose was a British nobleman, politician, and newspaper proprietor.John Berry was born in Surrey on 12 July 1909, the eldest son of William Berry, later first Viscount Camrose and first Baronet Berry of Hackwood Park, and Mary Agnes Berry, née Corns...
, Hampshire (Christie’s, £7,030,908, up to 1,681 lots) - 1994 Sept 28 - Oct 01 (4) — Stokesay CourtStokesay CourtStokesay Court is a country house and estate in Onibury in Shropshire, England.- History :Stokesay Court was built by the rich Victorian era merchant, philanthropist, social conservative, Christian evangelist and church-builder John Derby Allcroft...
, Shropshire (Sotheby's, £4,219,755, up to 2,143 lots) - 1984 June 04 – Jun 05 (2) — St Osyth's Priory, Essex (Christie’s, £581,547)
- 1978 May 31 – Jun 01 (2) — WateringburyWateringburyWateringbury is a village near the town of Maidstone in Kent, England. The Wateringbury Stream flows into the River Medway just above Bow Bridge. It formerly powered three watermills in the village, one of which survives. Wateringbury railway station is on the Medway Valley Line.- Demography :As...
Place, Kent (Christie's, £1.37m, only in situ by David Style post 1945) - 1977 May 18 - May 26 (9) — Mentmore TowersMentmore TowersMentmore Towers is a 19th century English country house in the village of Mentmore in Buckinghamshire. The house was designed by Joseph Paxton and his son-in-law, George Henry Stokes, in the revival Elizabethan and Jacobean style of the late 16th century called Jacobethan, for the banker and...
, Buckinghamshire (Sotheby's, over £6,000,000) - 1968 Jun 04 - June 05 (2) — PyrfordPyrfordPyrford is an English village that for centuries had historical links with the monastery of Westminster, in whose possession it remained between the Norman Conquest and the Dissolution of the Monasteries nearly five hundred years later. It is thirty miles by road from central London and situated...
Court, Surrey (Christie, Manson & Woods, 619 lots) - 1922 Jun 12 - Jun 23 (10) — Cassiobury ParkCassiobury ParkCassiobury Park is the principal public open space in Watford, Hertfordshire, in England. It comprises over and extends from the A412 Rickmansworth Road in the east to the Grand Union Canal in the west....
, Hertfordshire (Knight, Frank and Rutley, 2,606 lots) - 1921 Oct ?? - Oct ?? (18) — Stowe HouseStowe HouseStowe House is a Grade I listed country house located in Stowe, Buckinghamshire, England. It is the home of Stowe School, an independent school. The gardens , a significant example of the English Landscape Garden style, along with part of the Park, passed into the ownership of The National Trust...
, second "Great Sale", including the house (Jackson-Stops, over 3,700 lots) - 1882 Jun 17 - July 20 (17) — Hamilton PalaceHamilton PalaceHamilton Palace was a large country house located north-east of Hamilton, South Lanarkshire, Scotland. The former seat of the Dukes of Hamilton, it was built in 1695 and subsequently much enlarged. The house was demolished in 1921 due to ground subsidence despite inadequate evidence for that...
, South Lanarkshire, Scotland (Christie, Manson, and Woods, 2,213 lots, raising £332,000 in the first 12 days; items not in situ, sold in London) Included large parts of the Beckford collections (see 1822) - 1848 Aug 15 - Sep 30 (40) — Stowe HouseStowe HouseStowe House is a Grade I listed country house located in Stowe, Buckinghamshire, England. It is the home of Stowe School, an independent school. The gardens , a significant example of the English Landscape Garden style, along with part of the Park, passed into the ownership of The National Trust...
, Buckinghamshire, first "great sale" (Christie, Manson and Woods, £77,562) - 1842 Apr 25 - June 23 (32) — Strawberry HillStrawberry Hill HouseStrawberry Hill is the Gothic Revival villa of Horace Walpole which he built in the second half of the 18th century in what is now an affluent area of the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames in Twickenham, London...
, collection of Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of OrfordHorace Walpole, 4th Earl of OrfordHoratio Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford was an English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and Whig politician. He is now largely remembered for Strawberry Hill, the home he built in Twickenham, south-west London where he revived the Gothic style some decades before his Victorian successors,...
, sold by his heir, George Waldegrave, 7th Earl WaldegraveGeorge Waldegrave, 7th Earl WaldegraveGeorge Edward Waldegrave, 7th Earl Waldegrave was a British peer.The eldest legitimate child of the 6th Earl Waldegrave, he was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford...
(George Robins) - 1822 June 10 - July 23 (32) — Wanstead HouseWanstead ParkWanstead Park is the name of a grade II listed municipal park covering an area of about 140 acres , located in Wanstead, in the London Borough of Redbridge, historically within the county of Essex...
, London, to pay the debts of Catherine Tylney-Long's husband, the 4th Earl of MorningtonWilliam Pole-Tylney-Long-Wellesley, 4th Earl of MorningtonWilliam Pole-Tylney-Long-Wellesley, 4th Earl of Mornington was an Anglo-Irish nobleman notorious for his dissipated lifestyle.-Ancestry:...
(George Robins, 5,000 lots, £41,000) - 1822/1823 - The Fonthill AbbeyFonthill AbbeyFonthill Abbey — also known as Beckford's Folly — was a large Gothic revival country house built around the turn of the 19th century at Fonthill Gifford in Wiltshire, England, at the direction of William Thomas Beckford and architect James Wyatt...
, Wiltshire, sales by Christie's of the collections of William BeckfordWilliam Thomas BeckfordWilliam Thomas Beckford , usually known as William Beckford, was an English novelist, a profligate and consummately knowledgeable art collector and patron of works of decorative art, a critic, travel writer and sometime politician, reputed to be the richest commoner in England...
(see his article, and 1882 above) - 1747 June 16 - June 27 (12) — CannonsCannons (house)Cannons was a stately home in Little Stanmore, Middlesex built for James Brydges, 1st Duke of Chandos between 1713 and 1724 at a cost of £200,000 but which in 1747 was razed and its contents dispersed....
, Middlesex, demolition sale of the structure and contents on the instruction of Henry Brydges, 2nd Duke of ChandosHenry Brydges, 2nd Duke of ChandosHenry Brydges, 2nd Duke of Chandos, MP , known from 1727 to 1744 by his courtesy title Marquess of Carnarvon, was the second son of James Brydges, 1st Duke of Chandos PC and his first wife Mary Lake...