Castle Hyde was granted to the Hyde family by Queen Elizabeth I in the late 16th Century, it was occupied by them until the mid-19th Century. They built the present house in the mid-1740s to a design by Abraham Hargrave, who also designed Christ Church, Fermoy. The Hydes sold the house in 1851 to John Sadler M.P., who resold it in 1862 to Sir John Becher, Bt., a member of the family which gave its name to the famous Grand National fence at Aintree, Becher's Brook

The design of this table developed out of those such as one with the 'antique' lyre serving as trestle-ends manufactured by F.H.G.Jacob-Desmalter in 1805 (see: D.Ledoux-Lebard, Le Mobilier Français du XIX Siècle, Paris, 1984, p.325).A similar arrangement existed on a music-room table belonging to Thomas Hope which was illustrated in his Household Funiture and Interior Decoration, London, 1808, pl.XV.
This pattern of calamander table is closely related to other types of writing-table produced by Gillow's. A writing-table with spindle-filled ends appears in their Estimate Sketch Books for 1818, nos. 2079 and 2084. The design and an executed table of that type are illustrated in G.Wills, Craftsmen and Cabinet-Makers of Classic English Furniture, Edinburgh, 1974, pls.108 and 109. The present lot is likely to have been executed at a similar time and may have formed part of a suite with such a writing-table.