An 1888 Manuscript Inventory & Valuation of the Contents of Carlton Towers, Made for Henry Stapleton, 9th Baron Beaumont (1848 to 1892)

A book, 21.5 by 33.5cm, containing approximately 183 pages, the majority lined, comprising: title page, main inventory & valuation, separate silver and plate inventory & valuation, and Index, with some interspersed blanks between sections and to the rear. Written in black ink, in an ornate but highly legible script, with red ink underlining and decoration of titles. Bound in quarter black leather over textured dark green cloth covered boards, with the remains of a paper title label to the spine, marbling to all edges of the text block, and marbled endpapers front and rear, robustly stitched, the endpapers with cloth reinforcement at the gutters also sewn in. The book remains firmly bound, externally the leather is rubbed, chipped and marked, nearly split along the front hinge but still just holding, the boards are bumped, slightly rubbed and marked. The text block is lightly marked and toned. From the archives of the RSA Insurance Group with their barcode strip to the front blank, and with an earlier Sun Fire Office Library stamp to the verso of the front endpaper opposite. The title page states that the valuation was: "Made for the purposes of Fire Insurance", presumably the insurers at the time were the Sun Fire Office, and this was the copy made for their records. The house was re-built in its present form from 1873 on, in a Gothic Revival style designed by the architect, Edward Welby Pugin, with Sir John Francis Bentley responsible for the interior. The ambitious project necessitated selling much of the estate, and seems to have practically ruined the young Lord Beaumont. Fortunately, in July 1888, he married the wealthy heiress, Violet Marie Louise Isaacson (1848 to 1910), rescuing his fortunes, before sadly dying of pneumonia 4 years later at the age of just 43. The valuation was made during the months of March & April 1888, presumably as part of the financial preparations for the marriage, and includes Lady Beaumont's Bedroom and Dressing Room. The total valuation for the contents of the house was £38,444 9s, plus a further £2000 for the silver and plate, equating to nearly £7,000,000 today. Each item is separately described, often in impressive detail, without a per item valuation, though the weight of the silver items is given individually. Bibliophiles will be delighted that approximately 43 pages are devoted to the books in the Library and other locations. Mostly travels, histories, memoirs and practical tomes, some good maps and atlases, a few from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, some poetry and plays, but practically no novels, even outside of the main showy Library, and Shakespeare represented only by a 1771 6 vol set, probably the Johnson edition, as Samual Johnson and Boswell are in evidence. The estate ran into further difficulties after Henry's death, and his younger brother, Miles was obliged to make a second financially advantageous marriage in 1893 to rescue the family fortunes, before himself dying tragically young only 2 years later. This awkward late-Victorian period was safely negotiated, and Carlton Towers remains in the Beaumont/Howard family. A fascinating insight into the interior contents of one of the great English country houses, at a crucial and turbulent juncture in its history.…