'A cultivated eye for the antique': Charles Winn and the enrichment of Nostell Priory in the nineteenth century.

Nostell Priory, near Wakefield, is justly celebrated as an eighteenth-century house. With its fine neo-classical interiors by the architects James Paine (1717-89) and Robert Adam (1728-92), and one of the most important collections of Chippendale furniture in England, it is perhaps understandable if the involvement of later owners has been overlooked. However, recent research has revealed that many of the state rooms were left unfinished in the late eighteenth century, and that the majority of the paintings and books and a substantial proportion of the furniture and other objects which survive at Nostell today were introduced by Charles Winn in the nineteenth century. This article will re-examine his contribution to the interiors at Nostell and his antiquarian refurbishment of Wragby Church, and also investigate his multifarious collecting activities.

Charles Winn (1795-1874) (Fig. 1) was an unexpected heir to the Nostell estate. He was the second son of Esther, sister of Sir Rowland Winn, the 6th Baronet, who caused a scandal in the family by eloping to Manchester with the Nostell baker, John Williamson. (1) After Esther's death in 1803, her children--John, Charles and Louisa--were 'adopted' by the 6th Baronet, their uncle, and were educated under the watchful eye of the Winns' lawyer, Shepley Watson, at his house at Cold Hiendly, a few miles from Nostell. When the 6th Baronet died unmarried in 1805, his estates passed to John, then a boy of eleven, and he and his siblings changed their name to Winn. While John embarked on a Grand Tour of the Continent to complete his education, his younger brother Charles went up to Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Charles was later to take holy orders and served as the Rector of Wragby Church, within the walls of the park. It was only in 1817, when John died suddenly--and tragically young--in Rome, that Charles succeeded to the family estates. Despite his new responsibilities, Charles continued as the Rector of Wragby until the mid-1830s, (2) spending much of the year on his estates in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. He appears to have socialised within a small, close circle, consisting mostly of family and local friends.

In 1817, when Charles Winn inherited Nostell Priory, it was in rather a forlorn state. His grandfather, the 5th Baronet, had died leaving serious debts, so that all building and decorating work had been called to an abrupt halt in 1785, while his uncle, the 6th Baronet, known as 'a gay fox hunter', (3) showed little interest in the house. Robert Adam's Drawing Room and Vestibule were left as little more than empty shells and the Top Hall, which lacked its intended marble floor, was shut up as a store room. It is perhaps not surprising, therefore, that almost as soon as he inherited, Charles commissioned the decorator Thomas Ward to complete and redecorate many of the principal rooms on the first floor. (4) He started work on the family rooms, redecorating the late Lady Winn's dressing room as a private sitting room, and the Breakfast Room as an everyday dining room, with neo-grecian painted decoration. (5) Charles Winn went on to reinvent the Drawing Room as the Tapestry Room, with the present tapestry panels by Pierre van der Borcht (1545-1608); the Top Hall as a music room, with a large organ at one end (removed to Wragby Church in 1902); the grand Saloon as a comfortable sitting room; and the Vestibule as a Billiard Room, with the present bookcases by Gillow & Co (Fig. 7). The bookcases were part of a substantial Gillow's commission, ordered by Charles in the 1820s, (6) which included a suite of drawing room furniture (possibly intended for the Tapestry Room), the present Dining Room table, a pair of elaborate console tables, and a folio stand. All of these objects survive at Nostell today.

With scholarly interests and what one of his friends described as an established 'taste for antiques', (7) Charles started to collect in the tradition of his eighteenth-century ancestors. One of his first acts was the acquisition of an important collection of ancient Etruscan vases 'for the moderate sum of 500 £', which his brother, John, had found in Naples whilst on the Grand Tour. Described at that time as 'the second most substantial collection of Greek vases in this country which is still in private hands', (8) it was sold and dispersed in 1975. However, a few items have since been reacquired by the National Trust and are now displayed on the mantelpiece in the Billiard Room (Figs. 2 and 3).

By 1819, Charles was also adding to the fine collection of old master paintings at Nostell, which had mostly been acquired by the 5th Baronet in the 1760s and 1770s. He started as an 'amateur' collector, relying heavily upon the advice of the picture dealer and restorer, Mr Jennings of Poland Street, London, and later on that of Edwin Holder of York. Without a particular direction to his taste, he sought out representative works by 'Masters' of all the principal European Schools 'in the particular subjects they painted' (9) and 'seldom purchase[d] modern pictures'. (10) Jennings advised him on 'the value of each master, as it respects price or merit' and stated that he 'took great pains in describing the difference between copies and originals'. (11) The family's London house had been sold to pay off debts in 1785, but Charles travelled to the capital at least once or twice a year to visit salerooms and art exhibitions, staying at Thompson's Hotel in Cavendish Square or the United Universities Club. He also corresponded with over twenty different picture dealers and purchased paintings from country house sales. By 1841, he was forced to admit to having 'more paintings at Nostell than I can hang up' and sometimes sold on or exchanged 'duplicate specimens'. (12) The family's finances had recovered somewhat by the early nineteenth century, but Charles did not have access to unlimited funds. The amount he paid for paintings varied considerably, from ten pounds to Mr Joseph Aked of London for a putative portrait of Lady Thornhill, then and still attributed to William Hogarth (1697-1764), (13) now on the North Staircase, to three hundred and fifty guineas to Elizabeth Sheridan Carey (an impoverished 'gentlewoman' turned dealer) for a portrait of a man holding a glove (now in the Crimson Room), seemingly signed by Rembrandt. (14) Unfortunately, like many of the works he acquired, the 'Rembrandt' turned out not to be an original, reflecting the uncertainty of earlier connoisseurship. It is now attributed to Ferdinand Bol (1616-80).

Although he was keen to establish himself as a connoisseur of the fine arts, Charles also harboured historical and antiquarian interests. In addition to old master paintings, he collected 'character portraits', especially of monarchs and courtiers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He had a particular interest in portraits of members of the Tudor court, inspired by the 'Celebrated Picture of Sir Thomas More and ten of his Family', (15) which was then attributed to Hans Holbein. It had come to Nostell as an heirloom in the early eighteenth century and was considered the most important work in the collection in the nineteenth century. A number of Charles's historical portraits, including the pair of Henry VII and his wife, Elizabeth of York, acquired from Dr. Oxley of Pontefract for twenty-five pounds in 1830, (16) and another of Archbishop Warham, which Edwin Holder pronounced 'very curious ... and probably by Holbein', (17) are now displayed in the Lower Hall (Figs. 4 and 5). Several more, including the painting of More and his family, were loaned by Charles Winn to the first National Portrait Exhibition at the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum) in 1866. (18)

Although the portraits were introduced in the 1950s, the Lower Hall (Fig. 6) has been the setting for Charles's collection of old oak furniture since the mid-nineteenth century. Previously thought to have come from the Winns' seventeenth-century house, it transpires that most, if not all, of the furniture was acquired by Charles from curiosity dealers and country house sales. It is first recorded in the Lower Hall in around 1830, by the eccentric antiquarian, T.F. Dibden, who noted '2 large wooden seats or sofas of the time of Elizabeth or James, [which] shewed the owner to have an eye of taste on matters of ancient furniture'. (19) These settles, now in the West Passage, are actually nineteenth-century fabrications, put together from components of seventeenth-century coffers and buffets, though much of the rest of the collection is genuinely of an early date. During the nineteenth century, the Lower Hall, with its 'ancient' furniture and crypt-like atmosphere, took on something of the appearance of a baronial hall. It was used for gatherings of staff and family at Christmas and New Year, with traditional entertainments provided by the Ackworth mummers and parish hand-bell ringers. (20)

Even the famous eighteenth-century Adam Library turns out to have an important nineteenth-century layer: Charles was a dedicated bibliophile, who purchased the majority of the five thousand or so volumes at Nostell. (21) His collection quickly outgrew the existing shelves, expanding into new bookcases in the adjacent Billiard Room (Fig. 7). The lower tier was installed c. 1828, to accommodate the books of previous generations, leaving the old library free for his own collection. (22) An upper tier of bookcases was added in 1875, (23) when excess books had started to pile up under the billiard table. (24) Charles probably spent more lavishly and consistently on books than in any other area: six bundles of letters and bills in the archives record his purchases, referring to over forty different booksellers and authors. His books reflect the range of his interests and enthusiasms, from classical and medieval antiquities, numismatics and British and local history, to the fine arts, English literature, natural history and law. He sought out rare and out-of-print books from antiquarian booksellers, including a set of delightful eighteenth-century guidebooks by the York publisher Thomas Gent. He also purchased a number of specialist modern books by subscription direct from the authors: these included the Birds of Australia, Birds of Europe, and Birds of the Himalayas, thirteen superbly illustrated volumes by the Victorian ornothologist, John Gould (Fig. 9). A Fellow of the Zoological Society, Charles was described by Gould as 'one of my oldest friends and supporters'. (25)

More than just a repository for books, the Adam Library served as a store for Charles's collections of smaller antiquities, curiosities, natural history, geology and ethnography (Fig. 8). He continued the 5th Baronet's collection of coins and medals, which once filled the Chippendale medal cabinet to the right of the fireplace, adding ancient British and medieval specimens (today, only casts of medals and seals remain). He acquired 'antique bronze lamps', 'specimens of Egyptian pottery', 'battle axe heads' and 'antique daggers' (26) for a few pounds or shillings from country house sales. He gathered up miscellaneous curiosities on his travels, including canon balls 'Picked up on the field of Waterloo' and 'a piece of Roman or Ancient British earthenware, found at Low Stanton', (27) in Lincolnshire. He also purchased more substantial curiosities, recorded by visitors to the Library in the late nineteenth century, including several items 'reminiscent of Napoleon the First ... [such as] the double-barrelled flint-lock presented to him by the gun-makers of Paris, a likeness of him on ivory, done in his own hair, and the quilt that was on his bed at St Helena', (28) of which only the portrait on ivory now remains--on the mantelpiece in the Library.

Several of the drawers under the bookcases and in the medal cabinet in the Library are still packed with minerals and natural history specimens, including large pieces of coral, crystals, fossils and animal bones. In one drawer, is the 'Skull of a Walrus'; in another, the 'Tusk of a Boar found in the Hyena's Cave by C. Winn, 23 July 1822'. This latter, a tiny piece of chalky mineral, was picked up by Charles in the famous bone-cave at Kirkdale in North Yorkshire, (29) along with other seemingly anonymous fragments, labelled, presumably in a tongue-in-cheek spirit, as 'Back Tooth of the Lower Jaw of the Antidiluvian Hippotamus', 'Middle joint of the toe of the mammoth' and 'Bit of Rhinoceros'.

Charles also possessed a very important collection of ethnography, which came from the sale of the London Museum of Natural History at the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly in 1819. It included extremely rare articles from the South Pacific, such as the 'Fly trap brought by Captain Cook, the handle made of the bone of the arm of a chief taken in battle' and 'A fine feather idol from the Sandwich Isles'. These were sold to the Government of New South Wales in 1887. (30) Today, only miscellaneous ethnographic items remain in the Library, including a 'West African skull cap' and a human skull, 'brought to England by Capt. Hoppner', who captained the bombship Fury on her second voyage of Arctic discovery in 1824-25. Hoppner stayed at Nostell in 1831 and accompanied Charles and his family on a trip to Cornelian Bay, where they attended 'Monsieur Howard the Conjurer's performance'. (31) Charles also entertained Tamihana Te Ramparaha, the son of the great Maori Chieftain Te Ramparaha, during his visit to England in 1851-52; together they travelled to Leeds to inspect 'Messrs Marshall's and other machine works'. (32)

Charles's collecting activities extended beyond the walls of the house into Wragby Church. Between 1824 and 1834, he built a new vestry and refurbished the sixteenth-century chancel with old oak carvings, (33) a seventeenth-century Venetian carved wood pulpit, (34) a Flemish reredos representing the Pieta and the twelve Apostles, (35) and with a Norman font, said to have been taken from the ruined church of St Auburn near Bridlington. (36) He also commissioned Thomas Ward junior, the son of the decorator, to rearrange the sixteenth-century English stained glass in the east window and paint new panels, decorated with the arms of the benefactors of the medieval Priory of St Oswald. (37) Wragby Church was Ward junior's first assignment, but he went on to found the firm of Ward & Hughes, one of the great nineteenth-century pioneers in the making of stained glass, who executed several important commissions, not least for Westminster Abbey. (38)

However, Charles's most important and surprisingly underestimated contribution to the interior of the church was his purchase of the beautiful antique Swiss-German stained glass panels, with which most of the rest of the windows are filled (Figs. 10-12). (39) They were acquired by Charles in 1828-29, through an Edinburgh wine merchant, John Brougham, in two large consignments costing three hundred and twenty-eight pounds. (40) Ranging in date from 1514 to 1745 and depicting a wide variety of secular and ecclesiastical subjects, they were fixed in the windows with scant regard for their subject-matter, (41) like a massive colourful mosaic. In one window the Swiss hero, William Tell, jostles for space with the bound Susannah and a Virgin and Child. Dr. Paul Boesch, a Swiss scholar who travelled to England specifically to examine the collection in the 1930s, described it as 'astounding, the largest [of its kind] outside the Swiss County Museum in Zurich'. (42) In the 1960s, one hundred and forty-three unused panels, stored in crates in the Nostell cellar since the early nineteenth century, were sold to a dealer and eventually purchased by the Corporation of Zug in Switzerland. They are now displayed in the Museum in der Burg, with their provenance labelled as Nostell Priory.

New research has clarified the important contribution that Charles Winn made to Nostell Priory in the nineteenth century and is being used by the National Trust to influence the way it displays the contents of the house. Specimens from Charles's once-great set of Etruscan vases, 'Cabinet of Curiosities', and mineral and natural history collections, are now being shown to visitors, the latter having been hidden in the Library since the nineteenth century. In 2002, with the support of the Heritage Lottery Fund, the entire library of books and the Gillow console tables and seat furniture were acquired by the Trust from the Winn family. The Gillow bookcases in the Billiard Room were also accepted in lieu of tax. The console tables will be placed in the Dining Room and the seat furniture in the Tapestry Room, neither having been on public display for many years. From 2004, there will also be a changing exhibition of books, including works from Charles's library. In such ways, further layers of history at Nostell are gradually being brought to life and additional interest provided for visitors.

(1) They married in 1792.

(2) Baines's Directory of 1822 shows the incumbent at Wragby as the 'Rev. Charles Winn of Nostel Park', the Clerical Guide and Clergy List of 1829 shows Charles as both the incumbent of the Church and the patron of Nostell Priory, while Pigot's Directory of 1834 lists the Reverend John Morville and Charles Winn Esq of Nostell Priory in an inconclusive entry under 'Gentry and Clergy'. Morville is described on his gravestone as the curate of the parish for 'upwards of thirty years'. I would like to thank to Mr Michael Scott for this information.

(3) According to T.G. Wright, 'Reminiscences of Nostell', 1887 (Leeds, Yorkshire Archaeological Society, MS 803).

(4) Thomas Ward appears to have had Yorkshire roots, as his son was born at Methley, near Normanton, in 1808. He first appears in the London directories in 1822 as a 'Draughtsman, Decorative Painter, Paper-hanger and Gilder', based at 67 Frith Street, Soho Square.

(5) This decoration was destroyed by fire in 1980.

(6) All the above furniture has been firmly attributed to Gillow & Co. by Susan Stewart of Lancashire University. Papers in the Leeds Distric Archives (hereafter LDA), record that Charles made payments to the firm in 1822 (30 £-19s-0d)--NP/A1/8/26; 1825 (unspecified sum)--NP/C3/1/6/31; and 1826 (395 £-3s-4d)--NP/C3/1/13/5 (254). The bookcases and drawing room furniture are very similar to documented furniture by Gillow & Co. at Tatton Park and Wentworth Woodhouse, respectively.

(7) Letter from Richard Harrison to Charles Winn, 30 April 1818, transcribed in Christie, Manson and Woods, Greek and Etruscan Vases from Nostell Priory, 30 April 1975, p. 6.

(8) Ibid., p. 5.

(9) LDA, NP/A1/8 (1675). Letter from Charles Winn to Joseph Hunton, 1825.

(10) LDA, NP/A1/8/20. Letter from Charles Winn to Mr Thompson, Paris, 4 July 1864.

(11) LDA, NP.A1.8.17, part II, letters from S. Jennings to Charles Winn, 1821.

(12) LDA, NP/A1/8/17, part II, letter from Charles Winn to Abraham Grace, picture dealer, 1841.

(13) LDA, NP/A1/8/26, Charles Winn's Diary, 1871.

(14) For this episode, see LDA, NP/A1/8/17, part I, correspondence between Elizabeth Sheridan-Carey and Charles Winn, 1849-54. Much of this correspondence is transcribed in Maurice Brockwell, The Nostell Collection, London, 1915, pp. 125-27.

(15) LDA, NP/C4/1/15, Inventory of 1818, where it is recorded.

(16) Letter from A. Strickland to Charles Winn, 1830, transcribed in Brockwell, op. cit., p. 139.

(17) LDA, NP/A1/817, part I, letter from Edwin Holder to Charles Winn, 1849.

(18) For this loan, see LDA, NP/A1/8/14, Correspondence, 1865-68.

(19) T.F. Dibdin, A Bibliographical, Antiquarian & Picturesque Tour in the Northern Counties of England and Scotland, London 1838,, vol. I, p. 140.

(20) LDA, NP/A1/8/26, for references to such entertainments in Charles Winn's Diaries.

(21) In 2001, the National Trust's Libraries Adviser, Mark Purcell, surveyed the Nostell library and I have drawn upon his reports summarising the collection.

(22) A sketch survey of the Billiard Room, dated 1828 (Nostell Drawings Collection, no. [26] [1]-[3]), is probably associated with the installation of the bookcases. In addition, an entry in Charles's Diary for February 1829 record that he was 'Engaged from breakfast to dinner arranging books in the Library' (LDA, NP/A1/8/26).

(23) Letter from Charles's son, Rowland Winn, to Edward Peacock, Bottesford Manor, January 1875: '... I shall probably arrange to have the bookcases in the large library at once carried up to the top ...' (Scunthorpe, North Lincolnshire Museum Peacock Family Archive, Winn Correspondence, Box 13).

(24) Letter from R. Winn to E. Peacock, c. 1875 (Scunthorpe, North Lincolnshire Museum, Peacock Family Archive, Winn Correspondence, Box 13).

(25) LDA, NP/A1/8/16/4, letter from John Gould to Charles Winn, 1868.

(26) Objects purchased by Charles Winn from Bretton Hall in 1832 (there is a copy of the sale catalogue at Bretton Hall) and Coleby Hall in 1850 (LDA, NP A1.8.18).

(27) Transcribed from the original labels.

(28) 'Celebrities at Home: Lord St Oswald at Nostell Priory', The World, 14 May 1902, pp. 8-9.

(29) In 1821, Kirkdale Cave in North Yorkshire was uncovered by quarrymen, who found an enormous collection of fossilised bones there. Its discovery prompted the foundation in 1822 of the Yorkshire Museum, York, where the Kirkdale fossils form the nucleus of the geological collection. Charles Winn contributed 50 £ to the building fund in 1825.

(30) LDA, NP/A3/2 (1669), for a list of items and miscellaneous correspondence concerning the sale.

(31) LDA, NP/A1/8/26 Charles Winn's Diary, 1831.

(32) Wright, op. cit.

(33) Charles Winn made payments to 'J. Swaby, 109 Wardour St, 8 £-8-0 [8 guineas] for several pieces of old carved wood' in 1821 (LDA, NP/A1/8/26), and to 'Charles Roach for oak carvings for the chancel in Wragby Church' in 1824 (LDA, C3.1.6.31). The curiosity dealer, John Swaby, also supplied antiquarian objects to Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford, and to George and Mary Lucy at Charlecote Park.

(34) LDA, NP/C3/1/6/28, for the Nostell land agent's journal entry for 7 April 1827 recording that he 'put the pulpit into the church yesterday'.

(35) 'Paid for 12 Apostles and companion pieta--36 £', Thomas Ward's account, 1834 (LDA, NP/C3/1/5/6/9).

(36) Wragby Church leaflet, for this information.

(37) I would like to thank Michael Kerney for this information.

(38) LDA, NP/C3/1/5/5/1, for Thomas Ward's account.

(39) Michael Scott, an MA student in History of Art at York University, who recently undertook research into the Wragby stained glass, generously supplied me with much new information on the subject.

(40) Correspondence between Charles Winn and John Brougham (LDA, NP/C3/1/5/5/1NP/A1/8/17, part II, Bundle 2). See also Charles Winn's Diary, entries for February and March 1828 (LDA, NP/A1/826).

(41) Some of the panels were installed in Charles's time and several more in the mid-1870s for his son, later 1st Baron St Oswald, by John Knowles of York.

(42) For this quotation and further information on the subject-matter of the panels, see Paul Boesch, Swiss Glasspainting Abroad: The Collection in Nostell Church, Zurich, 1937, typescript translation from the German by Hilda Gaze, 1993, unpaginated.

Sophie Raikes is Assistant Curator for the Northern Territory of the National Trust. Previously, she was Research Assistant for the Yorkshire Region, where she carried out detailed research in the Nostell Priory archive, reinvestigating the history of the house and collection, focussing particularly on the nineteenth century.

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Author:	Raikes, Sophie
Publication:	Apollo
Geographic Code:	4EUUK
Date:	Apr 1, 2003
Words:	3806
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