The library at Knightshayes Court is not a particularly bookish room. It is filled with books but it looks as though they have been bought by the yard to fill the shelves. I might be doing the great industrialist Sir John Heathcoat-Amory, 1st Baronet, an injustice but I suspect that this room was used for drinks before dinner and for enjoying the view over the park rather than academic study. Nevertheless I was touched to see a gardening book tucked in beside Dickens. Apparently Sir John Heathcoat-Amory, 3rd Baronet wrote to his wife Joyce during the war "If we get through this...we will make a garden...". I like to think of them using this book, looking beyond the neglect of the war years to the creation of a landscape of great beauty where they could find peace.
is that shelf bordered with gold-tooled leather?
ReplyDeleteNo paper or crochet.
This is a seriously large house built with the proceeds of a Victorian textile fortune. Everything is sprinkled with gold. No paper or crochet in this library.
DeleteI think perhaps the Baronet was in tune with the 'Select Book Club' as described by PD James in Cover Her Face and brought to our attention via the Cornflower Books Blog.
ReplyDeleteFunnily enough I read 'Cover her Face' just last month and I think that the customers of the 'Select Book Club' were rather more middle class. I imagine that the Baronet paid an appropriate amount of money for his vision of a library to be created and the architect ordered the books.
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