Lot Essay
In 1805, Robert Needham, 11th Viscount Kilmorey, was left the Mourne Park estate by William Nedham, whom he had never met and to whom he may have been distantly related. Soon afterwards he built a house in a fashionable Wyatt style in place of the earlier house. The original family seat at Shavington in Shropshire was photographed for Country Life in 1918 and among the furniture visible in these are a pair of the Irish hall-benches, the design of which has been associated with Wyatt. There are a pair of these hall benches at Castle Coole, Co. Fermanagh, which are thought to have been supplied by the Dublin firm of Kidd to Wyatt's designs. A pair of these hall-benches are illustrated in C. Claxton-Stevens and S. Whittington, 18th Century English Furniture, The Norman Adams Collection, Woodbridge, 1983, p. 91