A GILTMETAL CYLINDRICAL HALL LANTERN suspended from four scrolling baluster supports with plumed finials, the four glazed panels edged with beading and hung with beaded and tasselled swags from ribbon-ties, enclosing a four-branch light fitment, fitted for electricity

FOREWORD During the reign of Edward the Confessor there were two manors in the parish of Sacombe and, after the Norman Conquest, both of these were granted to Peter de Valognes by William the Conqueror. Time marched on and the estate changed ownership frequently during the succeeding generations. In the second quarter of the 17th Century it was in the hands of John, later Lord Belsaye of Worlaby, who ruined himself espousing the cause of Charles I. There is a fine portrait of him in the National Portrait Gallery which was painted by Gilbert Jackson in 1636. He was ennobled after the Restoration but, still stalked by financial problems, he sold Sacombe to Sir John Gore in 1669. Nineteen years later it was purchased by Sir Thomas Rolt, erstwhile Governor of Bombay and President of the East India Company. His children, Edward and Constantia, are portrayed in a fine picture, painted during the 1690's by Jonathan Richardson, which was included in the recent Swagger Portrait Exhibition at the Tate (see illustration). It is tempting to conjecture that this striking portrait was set in the Sacombe landscape. It was Edward who put in hand a grandiose building scheme. He commissioned Vanburgh to design a fine house for him with park and formal gardens. A walled garden was laid out near the church and walks and vistas were designed in the woods. However, Rolt appears to have tired of Vanburgh before the house was built and James Gibbs was commissioned to submit plans but Rolt died of smallpox in 1712 before the work was started. Edward's grand-daughter Mary married a Guard's officer, Timothy Caswall, who was also Member of Parliament for Brackley. He was a friend of the Younger Pitt who visited Sacombe on several occasions. In fact he was staying there when Lord Gower, the English ambassador to the Court of Louis XVI, stopped at Sacombe to give the Prime Minister the news of the start of the French Revolution, when he was on his way to appraise the King of this dramatic turn of events. At this time the family were still living in the old house and in about 1783 Timothy Caswall decided to build a new house at Coldharbour about a mile to the north-east and, at the same time, he demolished what remained of Edward Rolt's grandiose schemes such as the walled garden. Timothy Caswall died in 1802 and his son, George, who had married the co-heiress of a wealthy London grocer in a runaway marriage to Gretna Green in 1786, seems to have scooped the pool. On her marriage his bride brought (200,000 to the family coffers and they wasted little time in starting to spend it. In 1803 they decided to build a new house which was in the style of James Wyatt, although it is not known whom the architect was. It has strong resemblances to Dodington Park and Rudding Park, the former built by James Wyatt in Gloucestershire in about 1800 and the latter by his nephew, Lewis Wyatt, in Yorkshire in 1807. Sacombe was finished in 1806 but funds were probably running short at the end as it was mortgaged in 1805. In 1825, after his death, the house and estate were sold to Samuel Abel Smith, his neighbour at Woodhall Park. The house was mainly leased during the 19th Century until, in 1911, a fire gutted the interior of the main building. It was immediately rebuilt at a cost of (30,000 and in 1951 the main reception rooms and bedrooms were leased by Mr Edward Medlicott, who formed the collection which is included in this catalogue. For the last forty years or so Edward Medlicott has cherished and nurtured a deep love for this house and its surrounding land which bears silent testimony to so many vignettes of our history, and much of what is written here is based upon his notes on the history of Sacombe. I asked Edward Medlicott the other day whether he was drawn to collecting Regency and Empire furniture, objects and clocks before, or after, he moved to Sacombe in 1951. Perhaps the fine Regency house had engendered his passion for the Prince Regent, that Apollo of the Arts, and for the cultures of England and France at the turn of that century. He told me that living at Sacombe had certainly spurred him on in his quest but that his passion for the period had really started when he was a child. His mother, who had a deep interest in the Classics and Mythology, had steeped him in stories of these when he was young. His father had collected clocks and he, Edward, an engineer by profession, had inevitably been drawn to them too. One of his most vivid childhood memories was of an Empire clock (lot 124) modelled as Aristaeus leaning mournfully against his empty beehive whilst his dog sadly and faithfully looks on. His mother had told him how Aristaeus, son of Apollo and the nymph Cyrene, had fallen in love with Eurydice, the wife of Orpheus, and how, when she rejected his advances, he had pursued her into the fields. There she was stung to death by a serpent and the Gods punished Aristaeus by destroying his bees, the other passion of his life - hence the empty hive. Everything ended happily for Aristaeus, but not for faithful Eurydice, but the full story is too long to tell here. However, at this early age, Edward Medlicott had imbibed a love of objects with a classical theme. The fine Empire clock (lot 36) depicting The Oath of the Horatii, the same model as the celebrated example in the Royal Collection, was one of his first purchases for about (30. Again, as a young man, he once went to the Academy Cinema in Oxford Street and saw in a room-setting, in the feature film, a model of the Minerva clock: a few weeks later he saw another model of the same clock in a dealer's window, the Goddess holding a spear and with a shield protecting her ample bosum (lot 9): he bought it and has treasured it ever since. I often think that a great deal of the pleasure that one derives in owning an object is to remember why, when and where one bought it or indeed inherited it. Edward and Patricia Medlicott lived at 6, Chesham Place from 1930 until the late 1960's and the house was eventually demolished as part of the site of the new German Embassy. During the years prior to the last war only a very small and select group of enthusiasts collected Regency and Empire furniture and works of art. Probably the best known of them was the play-wright Edward Knoblock (see lot 115) who was a friend and colleague of the fashionable decorator Dolly Mann. She, with her partner Ronnie Fleming, traded as Mann and Fleming, and Ralph Dutton, who formed a fine collection of Regency furniture and objects at Hinton Ampner, in Hampshire, was also involved in this venture. Lord Gerald Wellesley, later 7th Duke of Wellington, and Sir Albert Richardson, both architects, and the Italian art-historian, Mario Praz, were all early collectors of fine Regency furniture. The first edition of Margaret Jourdain's Regency Furniture (1795-1830) (see: lot 458) was published in 1934 and these pioneers were many years ahead of their time. Philip Blairman, Temple Williams and Geoffrey Hill of Jeremy were amongst the first members of the London trade to specialise seriously in the period. This was the scene when the Medlicotts first began to collect Regency and Empire furniture and objects in the early post war years. Unfortunately only a handful of invoices have survived but those that have indicate purchases from Jeremy (lots 34, 35 and 120) and Dolly Mann. Alexis ffrench at 15, Pont Street was a neighbour and they became close friends purchasing many pieces from him. The Medlicotts must have been frequent visitors to all of those who were stocking early 19th Century furniture in those post-war days. One of Edward Medlicott's favourite recollections refers to when he bought the Regency chandelier in the drawing-room (lot 96). He asked the dealer from whom he had purchased it to deliver it to Sacombe Park, near Hertford: the dealer told him that, by an extraordinary coincidence, it had come from Woodhall Park, the neighbouring estate to Sacombe and that it would thus almost be returning home. Nothing gave Edward Medlicott and his wife more pleasure than to refurbish Sacombe with pieces from the period when the house was built. May those who buy them gain as much pleasure from their ownership as have the Medlicotts during the last fifty years or so. W.A.C. 13.vii.1993 FURNITURE, SCULPTURE AND PORCELAIN THE FRONT HALL FURNITURE

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Lot Essay

The design of this lantern is based on that of a very distinguished group of Louis XVI examples of which the closest and best known is in the Wrightsman Collection at the Metropolitan Museum, New York (see: F.J.B.Watson, Furniture, Boxes, New York, 1970, vol.III, p.67, no.304). A lantern lacking the ribbon swags is in the collection of the Duke of Buccleuch at Bowhill, Selkirk.

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