18TH CENTURY

The Chirk spinning-wheel, which probably belonged to Elizabeth Myddelton (d.1772), is listed in the 1795 inventory in the Chapel Room. Recently in the Cromwell Hall, it was described with a 'Neat Table and Spinning Wheel 0.15.0'. A related mid-eighteenth century spinning-wheel is displayed at Knole Park, Kent; and the contemporary art of spinning as a genteel pursuit was recorded in George Romney's celebrated portrait of 1787 of Emma Lady Hamilton (d.1815) as 'The Spinstress' (R. Edwards, Shorter Dictionary of English Furniture, 1964, p. 482, fig. 3).