Nelson & His World

Discussion on the life and times of Admiral Lord Nelson
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 Post subject: Where is the staircase from Nelson's home?
PostPosted: Thu Jun 05, 2008 6:56 pm 
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I was alerted a few days ago by friends from Norfolk to the possibility that the staircase from Nelson's boyhood home is still in existence. The claim is that it was moved on the demolition of the Burnham Thorpe Parsonage to another historic Norfolk House. There appear to be two houses with competing claims to have the staircase: Brinton Hall and Briningham House.
There is a recent webpage http://brereton.org.uk/brinton/nelson-stair-case.htm containing pictures of the Brinton one which appears to be the favourite location. Does anyone know anything about the parsonage's demolition? Could what appears to be a family legend be genuine?

----- Micr


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PostPosted: Fri Jun 06, 2008 12:34 am 
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Welcome to the forum!

It's impossible, of course, to make any certain claim that the staircase came from the parsonage house at Burnham Thorpe, though the practice of 'cannibalising' demolished properties is a well-established one. Indeed, the staircase in my own 18th century house has been brought from somewhere else, our surveyor told us.

One thing that makes me think that this staircase didn't come from Burnham Thorpe parsonage is that it is rather grand. It looks perfect in its present setting but I think the parsonage was an altogether more modest affair. John Sugden, in his biography of Nelson describes the L-shaped house: 'The longer wing, may have been the original building, a two-storey cottage with three square windows above and two flanking the door below. ..In the smaller wing, the rooms on the upper floor were lit by dormer windows.' Although even modest houses had elegant staircases in the eighteenth century, they would have been proportionate to the size of the house so I don't think the parsonage staircase would have been anything like as splendid as this one.


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PostPosted: Thu Dec 18, 2008 10:13 am 
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I am just to updating this thread to say that the webapge http://brereton.org.uk/brinton/nelson-stair-case.htm was updated in November with speculation that the so called "Nelson Staircase" may have come from Merton Place when its contents were sold off in 1822 and it was demolished. This was the same year as the major remodelling at Brinton Hall - so at least that fits. The latest information - not yet on the website is that the Merton Place staircase of three flights could have been adapted to form the one long flight and one short flight at Brinton.

So there is now a search going on for documentary evdience for the sale of the staircase and its moved to Brinton. It is also hoped that experts will date the Brinton staircase.

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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Thu Dec 18, 2008 12:04 pm 
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micr:

many thanks for that most interesting information - it would be very pleasing to think that something was left of Merton after the demolition.


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PostPosted: Mon Jan 26, 2009 2:35 pm 
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Just before Christmas, I found in The Times advertisements concerning the sale of Merton Place and its demolition.

There had been a number of attempts to sell the whole estate, e.g. On May 24 1820 the Freehold Mansion and Land was offered for sale,
"containing a capital freehold family mansion and offices, called Merton Place, ....."

Obviously no purchaser was found for on 10 Sept 1821 an advert appeared in The Times in which the various building materials and fixtures were offered for sale by a Mr. Grimault, who carried out demolitions. The sale was to take place on 19, 20 Sept 1821. This advert was repeated twice on 12 Sept and 17 Sept.

The advert includes, "a real wainscot staircase complete."

The sale must have been successful since Grimault held a second sale of building materials on 15 & 16 Nov 1821. This included "about 250,000 very good sound bricks, cleaned and stacked." So clearly after the interior fittings had gone the house walls had been taken down.

We are investigating the possibility that the staircase could have been shipped to Cley/Blakeney in one of the coastal vessels owned by a branch of the family of the Breretons of Brinton Hall, however we have not at present got the names of the ships which the merchants Robert & Randle Brereton owned in 1821. The earliest record we have found of their ships were two sloops, built and registered in 1826, of 57 tons and 88 tons. But we believe the family shipping business was operating earlier.

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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Mon Jan 26, 2009 3:00 pm 
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Micr

It certainly sounds as if your staircase is indeed the one from Merton.

I'm not sure if I still have the details - but I recall once reading about a property in America which apparently had roof tiles from Lord Nelson's home.

I took that to be Merton.

If I get the chance I will have a dig through some old papers and see what I can find.

If we could find those quarter of a million bricks, borrow your staircase, swap those roof tiles - maybe we could think about rebuilding Nelson's "dear, dear" home. Bags I be curator!!

MB


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Mon Jan 26, 2009 4:33 pm 
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Micr: many thanks for posting that most interesting and very exciting news. The staircase in the link you provided looks much more likely to have come from Merton than Burnham Thorpe Parsonage. Please keep us posted on future developments.

Is any home of Nelson's still standing? The Parsonage and Merton have gone; what about Roundwood? Though he never spent a night there, so perhaps it doesn't count. Despite Fanny's complaints about it, it seemed a very handsome house to me.

Even the lodgings and hotels he stayed in when in London seem to have been demolished. His lodgings at 2 Pierrepoint Street in Bath carry a small plaque commemorating his stay, and of course, his bed - in which I have slept! - is still in the Castle Hotel, Llandovery, where he and his party spent a night on their tour of Wales and the West Country.

A rebuilt Merton? OK, you can be curator, Mark. I'll cover your lunch breaks and holidays.

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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Mon Jan 26, 2009 5:31 pm 
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Sorry - my memory going a bit fuzzy there.

Those roof tiles came from the Trafalgar estate when the 4th Earl Nelson lived there.

Best put the Merton rebuild on the back burner.

T - Roundwood was demolished some decades ago. Somewhere I have an article from one of the East Anglian newspapers.

There is a blue plaque on 103 Bond Street, London, saying that Nelson lived there in 1797.

Image

MB


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Thu Jan 29, 2009 4:16 pm 
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Nelson and Frances also rented for a time no 12 Abbey Green, Bath, a late Georgian semi-detached villa which is now (with its other half) a rather noisy pub. There has been much renovation of course, but the ground-floor fireplace in the saloon is of the right age and type and may well be original - did the Hero warm his buttocks at it? I like to think so!

The fine tree (walnut I think) on the green certainly stood in N's day - did he crack one or two over post-prandial port? One is reminded of the true tale of the walnuts at the disastrous second dinner at Admiralty House.

Several of the hotels he boarded at when on business in London throughout his career still exist, and the building of the Angel Inn in The High at Oxford where he stayed with Lord and Lady Hamilton, the Matchams and the Rev William N still stands. It bears a blue plaque, not to N but to Mrs Cooper, the maker of a certain well-known and culturally ground-breaking breakfast spread, whose shop this was after the Angel closed. BTW, most biogs state that N stayed at the Star in Cornmarket street - not so, as Matcham changed the booking on arrival after seeing the less-than-grand inn - most unsuitable for his family!

Justin
in bright and sunny Oxford having breakfasted royally on Cooper's Original Oxford Marmalade

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[color=#0000FF][b]Justin Reay FSA FRHistS
Naval and Maritime Art Historian[/b][/color]


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Thu Jan 29, 2009 7:09 pm 
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Justin, your information about the Angel in Oxford came as quite a surprise to me. Having lived in The High at Oxford for a very short while many years ago, I am afraid to say that I was entirely oblivious to the fact that Nelson had stayed at the Angel Inn. Worse, even though intimately acquainted with the few hostelries existing in and around the High, I don't recall ever being aware of the existence of the Angel. Worse still, a quck google shows that I lived virtually opposite the Angel (above a rather dingy charity shop).

My excuse for my ignorance is that although it seems the Angel was the most important coaching inn in Oxford, it closed in 1866, which was a bit before my time. But I was still puzzled that I didn't notice the buildings of what would have been a fine coaching inn complete with archway for the horses. However it turns out that along with most of Nelson's abodes, most of the Angel Inn (which originally had a frontage of 110 feet) was demolished in 1876 to make way for the dreaded Examination Schools. The small part that remains is what was its coffee room.

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 Post subject: UPDATE on Nelson's Staircase web page
PostPosted: Fri Feb 06, 2009 7:46 pm 
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I am just updating this thread to say that the webapge http://brereton.org.uk/brinton/nelson-s ... #janupdate was updated a few days ago, with January's news about the investigation. This includes a markup of the 1805 plan of Merton Place stairwell, with the bits of the Brinton Hall staircase overlaid in colour - they fit very very closely!

Attention is now focusing on the coastal shipping business owned by Robert John Brereton and Randle Brereton of Blakeney. We are trying to find out the names of the ships they had registered in 1821, which would have been carrying goods between London and Norfolk.

A researcher has found the Blakeney registrations post 1826-1855 in the archives at Kew and this shows these owners had many ships first registered in this period, including two in 1826, the Blakeney Packet (57 tons) and the Blakeney Trader (88 tons). What we are looking for is records of registrations before 1821 so perhaps we could then find the shipping movements which COULD have carried the staircase from London to Norfolk.

News is just in from a member of the Glaven Valley Historical Society who is studying the history of Blakeney Harbour that the Breretons had 10 vessels in 1827, and had been operating there since before 1817, but that records are scarce or absent for the period around 1821.

I wonder whether any of the maritime experts who scan these pages can offer some advice about where to most easily access Lloyd's List for 1821/2, apart from visiting the NMM.

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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sat Feb 07, 2009 12:10 am 
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Micr

There is a Lloyds Register for 1820 on Google Books.

Hopefully this link will take you there. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=e4M4AAAAMAAJ&pg=PT7&dq=lloyds+register+1820,#PPT3,M1

I'm not au fait with these books so not sure if it will be of use.

Let us know how you get on.

I LOVE these historical detective stories

MB


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sat Feb 07, 2009 1:41 am 
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Mark, Thank you very much indeed for that link which worked fine and I found the following entry:

Lloyd's Register of Shipping 1820

Col 0: 295 (= entry number)
Col 1: Blakeny (= Ship's name) Bg I.B. (= Brig with Iron Bolts)
Col 2: W.Penton (= Ship's Master?)
Col 3:107 (=tons) SDB (=Single Deck with Beams)
Col 4: Y?mth NScotia
Col 5: 6 (= vessel is in 6th year of age)
Col 6: Brereton
Col 7: 10 (=10 feet draught of water when loaded)
Col 8: Ya (=Surveyed at Yarmouth) Coastr
Col 9: A 1 (= First class vessel, with materials of first quality) x8 (= not surveyed since 1818)
Col 10: -

The bits in brackets are my interpretation of the meaning of what is in each column of the entry. This is partly provided by the key, but I have had to make some guesses also.

So this shows the Breretons owned a coastal brig named Blakeny in 1820. It had been surveyed for Lloyds in Yarmouth in 1818. I interpret Column 4 to mean that it was registered in the port of Yarmouth and possibly that it originated in Nova Scotia. I am wondering whether the fact that it was registered in Yarmouth was because there was no registration in Blakeney which apparently starts in 1826 according the the Glaven Historical Society.

So now I am looking for the voyages undertaken by the Blakeny in late 1821/2.

But of course the Brereton's probably had other ships, but I have not yet spotted one in this 1820 register.

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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Tue Mar 10, 2009 7:06 pm 
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The staircase in the news: http://new.edp24.co.uk/content/news/sto ... 3A00%3A890

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 Post subject: Nelson in Fakenham
PostPosted: Thu Aug 06, 2009 10:34 pm 
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Can anyone help? Does anyone have any knowledge about Nelson staying for a time in Fakenham, Norfolk?

A man who recently purchased a house there has told me his house is rumoured to have links to Nelson and Nelson was supposed to have stayed in the house when visiting the town.

The owner has copies of old deeds referring to a Robert and Thomas Seppings; who owned the house about the dates that Nelson could have stayed in Fakenham.

Through marriage, the Seppings family had a connection to Brinton Hall, Norfolk and a Robert and Thomas Seppings are mentioned in the Brinton staircase investigations.


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