CIRCA 1869, PROBABLY SUPPLIED BY T. WOODGATE

The Encombe banqueting-hall sideboard commemorates the year 1869 being charged with the Eldon and Turnor family arms and was commissioned by the Eldon Estate tenants in celebration of the marriage of John Scott, 3rd Earl of Eldon (d.1926) and Henrietta Minna Turnor. Designed in Elizabethan buffet fashion, it is luxuriantly carved on oak that is likely to have derived from one of the picturesque estate's ancient trees. Ceres' garland of fruit and flowers together with Roman foliage wreath the arms surmount the mirrors antique-fluted and patera-enriched cornice. Its truss-hermed pilasters of youths personifying are wreathed by ivy and bull-maces and evoke Arcadia. Garlands that wreath the table frieze, provide a roosting place for birds; while the commode doors display medallioned trophies of the chase that are framed by garlanded pilasters bearing heads of boars and stags.

Its profusion of birds is appropriate to the name Encombe/Hennecumbe suggesting Fowls valley (A. Fagersten, The Place-Names of Dorset, 1933). It would have been intended for the aggrandised house designed at this period by Salvin.