SALES REVIEW


FURNITURE & WORKS OF ART A Regency bookcase which once graced the library of Woodfold Hall, Mellor, sold as the top lot in the October Furniture & Works of Art sale, selling for £20,750.


The bookcase was commissioned by Henry Sudell, a cotton merchant and manufacturer, in 1805, for his newly built country house Woodfold Hall. It took ten weeks to make and cost Mr Sudell £33, 6s. 4d.


24 | WOOLLEY & WALLIS


The grand mansion of Woodfold Hall boasted twenty rooms on the ground floor, had its own brew house and dairy. A four mile long 9’ high wall secured the 400 acre estate. Mr Sudell was a generous man but his good fortune didn’t last. For a man who once travelled to Blackburn in a grand coach-and-four, he left Woodfold Hall 1827 with nothing.


The contents of his house were offered at auction on Christmas Eve 1827 and the bookcase was almost certainly bought at the sale by Reverend John William Whittaker, an Anglican clergyman and then passed by decent to the present vendor.


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