Auction Catalogue

7 October 2004

Starting at 9:30 AM

.

Ancient, British and World Coins and Banknotes

Grand Connaught Rooms  61 - 65 Great Queen St  London  WC2B 5DA

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Lot

№ 1237

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7 October 2004

Hammer Price:
£280

Essex, Wanstead, Skidmore’s Globe series, Penny, 1797, frontal elevation of Wanstead House, rev. globe, edge lettered, 26.44g/6h (DH 2 and Middlesex 124). Extremely fine, obverse with full original colour, reverse attractively patinated (£120-150)

Provenance:
Fawcett/Litman Collection.

Wanstead House, situated on the edge of Epping Forest, originally dated to the mid-16th century. It was bought in 1667 by Sir Josiah Child (1630-99), head of the East India Company. In 1715 his son, Sir Richard Child, 1st Earl Tylney (†1750), commissioned the architect Colin Campbell to rebuild the house in neo-classical Palladian style; the new building was completed in 1722 at a cost of £360,000. By the time of the issue of the token the house had passed to the 3-year old James Tylney-Long (†1805) and was being occasionally let to members of the Bourbon royal family exiled from France. After James’ death the estate passed to his 15-year old sister Caroline (1789-1825) who, with an income of £80,000 a year, was the richest woman in England apart from royalty. In 1812 she married William Wellesley-Pole (1788-1857), the vain self-publicist and nephew of the Duke of Wellington, who was successively Tory MP for St Ives and Wiltshire. Wellesley-Pole squandered Caroline’s fortune and fell seriously into debt in the early 1820s; his creditors auctioned off the contents of the house in 1822 and the house itself was sold for a bargain £10,000 to a firm of builders who demolished it by 1825. Sold with much further background information