No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VA… Read more

Session I Thursday 20 January at 10.30 am Millden - a Scottish Lodge (Lots 1-284) MILLDEN A Personal Recollection Millden was built for the Earls of Dalhousie in the Regency Period, the first of the sporting lodges on their Glenesk estate. It occupied a beautiful position looking south over the river Northesk. "Low built and elegant with as much a French feel as a Scottish one", it was let in the past to Ivan Cobbold, a great shot and Harold Macmillan's brother-in-law, and then to the Duke of Roxburghe, and provided the best grouse shooting in Scotland. Shortly before the beginning of the war, King George VI and Chamberlain stayed for a week. Over the past fifteen years the grouse bags had declined and the grey partridges which had also flourished in the glen all but disappeared. The raptors who fed on them had not. The deer too had increased. One day last August on the hill opposite the house normally bereft of deer, three hundred stags moved in and would have stayed had it not been for one of my two friends, the most recent occupants, spying them and after a short drive in his wartime jeep a rapid "bang bang" was heard. He had shot three and scared the others away. No game book, however, could tell you what an enchanting place Millden had become. Since my friends took it on, everything in the house felt as if it had always been there. The stags' antlers in the porch, the relief map of the Highlands, the Victorian post-box on the gothic table in the hall, all fitted perfectly. The drawing room was one of the nicest rooms in Scotland. The furniture was a clever mix, Georgian needlework-covered armchairs, fine Regency tables, particularly two drums, a smart copy of a Riesener desk and more gothic from lodges past were perfectly arranged and sofas and big easy chairs covered in the prettiest of old chintzes. There was always a fire and there were always flowers in a two-tier jardinière from Malletts or in pretty Wemyssware jugs, the most attractive and rarest of which symbolically perished during the farewell weekend before Christie's packers could get their hands on it. The flowers in the room were reflected in the particularly fine needlework rugs on the floor. Like the furniture, the pictures fitted the house. All manner of game, dogs and keepers hung round the drawing room. Good examples of works by Richard Ansdell and Archibald Thorburn; two excellent drawings by that rare early 19th century ornithologist the Reverend Atkinson, and favourites of mine, a pair of pictures of ptarmigan by J.C. Bell. Next to the drawing room was a tartan-clad card room with more gothic and pretty black lacquer papier-mâché chairs under wonderful butterfly pictures, Victorian ones - not from The Pharmacy! Leading from the card room was a very well-stocked bar with an inexhaustible supply of everything on one of a pair of scagliola-topped tables by Bartoli, the other one across the room supported an early carving of golden plovers by Guy Taplin. The bedrooms were full of birchwood furniture and sporting prints and the dining room was panelled with sporting trophies, paintings of the Monarch of the Glen and some outstanding heads. It is very sad to think that all this has now been disassembled. It had given so much pleasure. But the memories will live on and hopefully the grouse and the partridges will return to that beautiful and still unspoilt Scottish glen. Lord Hindlip December 2004. THE HALL

A GEORGE III MAHOGANY STICK BAROMETER

BY GILKERSON, TOWER HILL, LONDON, LATE 18TH CENTURY

Details

A GEORGE III MAHOGANY STICK BAROMETER
BY GILKERSON, TOWER HILL, LONDON, LATE 18TH CENTURY
The rectangular case with swan neck pedement flanking a brass urn above a plane moulded trunk to ebony urn shaped reservoir below
39 in. (99 cm.) high

Special notice

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis

More from MILLDEN - A SCOTTISH LODGE

View All