Lot 1266 of the Morningthorpe Manor Country House Sale (held by Keys Fine Art Auctioneers, Palmers Lane, Aylsham, Norwich, NR11 6JA) on 8 September 2016, is described in the auctioneer’s catalogue as:
REV GEORGE HARBIN: COPIES OF SEVERAL OLD CHARTERS, DEEDS AND EVIDENCES ETC OF THE FAMILIES OF FERRERS VERDUN BOUCHER DEVEREUX ROCHE OR DE RUPE ETC NOW IN YE CUSTODY OF THE LD VISC WEYMOUTH AT LONG-LEATE COM WILTS 1717, 2 manuscript volumes, volume 1 175 manuscript pages including index, volume 2 171 manuscript pages plus quantity of blank leaves, larger folded index bound in at rear, 4to, old blind stamped diced Russia, Provenance: probably Harbin’s sale by Puttick & Simpson advertised in The Guardian, 10 December 1873, Sir Thomas Phillips’ MS 4801 ink note in each volume, Sotheby’s 19 February 1947, Lot 538 purchased by Bryan Hall of Banningham Old Rectory, presumably sold to Stanley Crowe, his cat 83 Item 261 (2) An important survival of the charters formerly at Longleat.
The lot was estimated at £300-450 and made £720 plus 23% commission.
Although on the face of it this has little to do with Somerset and Dorset, the connection with Harbin and the greatest archival discovery in recent years of the Athelney cartulary by Professor Keynes is worth a note in SDNQ. In Professor Keynes’ paper he stated ‘One cannot peruse the list of Harbin manuscripts in the catalogue of the Phillipps library without wondering what interesting historical texts might lie hidden therein’. And following the dispersal of the library of Sir Thomas Phillipps ‘it is not always easy to trace the present whereabouts of any given volume’.1
The fact that one more of Harbin’s manuscripts has come to light, albeit for a brief moment, offers some hope of more of his papers surfacing. The provenance given in the catalogue can be added to. The Norfolk Office website includes an appeal for funds to help buy some of the local manuscripts. It states:
The archive being sold has been gathered over many years by a keen local collector. Its eclectic nature means that it is very difficult to give a simple summary of its contents. Some of the highlights are land ownership records from the fifteenth century, diaries, business records and records relating to the care of the poor in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.2
The house itself was offered in 2015 for a guide price of £1,500,000 by Savils, who state on their website that ‘a Norfolk antiquarian collector and bibliophile acquired the house with his wife in 1990’.3 The ‘antiquarian’ in question was Ron Fiske. An article about the sale states:
Fiske began collecting over 50 years ago with the purchase of a copy of Froissart’s Chronicles from Yarmouth dealer, David Ferrow, but a lifelong passion and involvement with local history, heraldry and other subjects saw the collection grow to something like 30,000 books and pamphlets, together with manuscripts and armorial rolls, a substantial collection of autographs and much more.4
Looking at the catalogue, Fiske was far more than a ‘keen local collector’ as described on the Norfolk Record Office website. Hopefully many of the local records have made their way to their repository.
1. S. Keynes, ‘George Harbin’s transcript of the lost cartulary of Athelney Abbey’ in Proceedings of the Somersetshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, 136 (1992), 149-59.
2. https://norfolkrecordofficeblog.org/2016/08/30/morningthorpe-manor-appeal/ accessed 7 Jan. 2017.
3. http://search.savills.com/property-detail/gbnorsnrs150059#/r/detail/ GBNORSNRS150059 accessed 7 Jan. 2017. The house was sold for £1,200,000 in June 2016 according a property website http://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/Morningthorpe.html accessed 7 Jan. 2017.
4. I. McKay ‘Keys to auction vast library from Morningthorpe Manor’ in the on-line Antiques Trade Gazette, 26 Aug. 2016 accessed on 7 Jan. 2017 at https:// www.antiquestradegazette.com/news/2016/keys-to-auction-vast-library-from-morningthorpe-manor/.
Comments