Antique treats
As they prepare for Bath Decorative Antiques Fair, the owners of Ludgate House Antiques in Falmouth chat to BEE BAILEY about their 1680s house, a cattleman’s show trunk and why the history of pieces is so important to them
RALPH Retallack remembers the moment he decided to buy Ludgate House. He’d seen pictures of the Grade Ii*-listed house online and was desperate to go inside, but it was already under offer. Then he got a call to say the vendor was going to put it back on the market.
“I went up to see it that afternoon,” he says. “I walked through the door and said, ‘Yes, I’ll buy it’. ”
When Ralph stepped inside the house in Falmouth’s Old High Street that day, his eye immediately travelled upwards, following the line of the Georgian barley twist staircase up to a window that looks out over the boats bobbing about on the Penryn estuary.
“As soon as you go up to the window, there you are looking out over the water,” he says. “You have to pinch yourself sometimes, you’re sitting there with a coffee and there are dolphins going past.”
Ralph moved into the house in 2015. “I lived on the Roseland [Peninsula]. I came over on the St Mawes ferry to get the keys, I was looking at the house from the water, thinking, ‘That’s going to be my next step in life’.”
Just six months later he met Nicki, and the couple, now happily married, opened Ludgate House Antiques in the shop at the front of the house in 2017. With its layered history, the property makes the perfect setting for the 18th to 20th-century antiques and decorative items they sell. And together they’ve loved uncovering its story.
“We always lived in old houses so are used to period features but this is a proper house,” Ralph says. “It was built in 1680 on Ludgate Hill – although it’s now called the Old High Street. It was the first house built up here. It was a silk merchant’s house. The packet ship captains used to come here to get their orders back in the day.
“Most of the internal features are preserved. It’s Grade Ii*listed, which means it has features of particular note that give it that extra importance. In this case it’s the oak panelled room [that’s now part of the shop] and the fabulous plasterwork ceiling, and the softwood panelling in the other parts of the house.”
When they met, Ralph, now 59, was a farmer-turnedproject manager for a housing association while Nicki, 56, was a personal banker. With Nicki growing up with grandparents who loved antiques, and Ralph’s mother often taking him to auctions when he was a boy, it didn’t take long before they started buying and selling. Ralph’s childhood saw him collecting clay pipes, pot lids and old bottles that he found in second-hand shops. Although much of his collection has now gone, he still has a set of colourful clay marbles which sit in a pewter bowl in the dining room. Ralph remembers buying them on a day out in Falmouth, somewhere along the Old High Street where he and Nicki now have their shop.
His love of antiques started with his mother, who often scoured auction houses with her son by her side. A farmer’s wife with a good eye for interiors, she bought hefty sideboards and dressers for their bed and breakfast farmhouse on the Roseland Peninsula.
When Ralph and Nicki first opened, they just used the original shop, a small room at the front of the house. They soon realised they needed to expand into their sitting room.
“About three years after we opened the shop, we opened up the main room, which people always wanted to get into because they could see it,” Ralph says. “They were always peering through, so we gave in, sold the sofas and moved the television.”
In September 2019 the couple hosted their own antiques fair at Enys Gardens in Penryn, which is now held every April and September.
Since they’ve been running the business, they’ve had some cracking finds and great experiences. They once found a dusty old metal dispatch box with compartments for stationery and filing. When they researched the owner – a Wing Commander Corkery – they discovered he’d been posted to the northern Indian border in the war and had written a book about his experience. They tracked down a copy of the book so the box could be sold with all its history. “We don’t just get something and put a price tag on it, we will try to find out as much as we can and pass that on to the buyer,” Ralph says. “We don’t just say ‘wooden box, £75’, we will try to establish what the wood is, what the date is, what it was used for; I think that’s important.”
Another item had a serendipitous twist in its tale.
“I bought a cattleman’s show chest that had sign writing on it with the person’s three initials and the surname. It was made of elm and would have been taken to agricultural shows – like the Royal Cornwall – by someone showing cattle.
“We took that up to a fair at Weybridge and somebody came along who had the exact initials and surname that was on the box. Although it wasn’t the same family, they were also from an agricultural background,” he says.
In recent weeks, Nicki and Ralph have been ferreting away some favourite pieces to take to the Bath Decorative Antiques Fair, held on March 15 and 16. Celebrating its 35th event next week, the fair is one of the most anticipated of the year.
A number of West Country dealers will be exhibiting, including Gloucestershire-based 1923 Antiques, Simon Wharton Antiques from Somerset, Dorset’s Smith & Moon Interiors and Mary Hossack Antiques from Sherborne, and The Bath Chap. Ludgate House Antiques will take up the same spot as last year, just inside the Pavilion foyer, where they’ll showcase a late 19th-century bleached-oak French dresser that’s carved with lion masks, fish and game.
“I love the scale of it,” Ralph says, “it’s got great proportions and it’s a fabulous look with that lovely white oak colour. It’s just a great-looking piece,” Ralph says.
“We’ve got a lovely George V plan chest, which we’ll be taking. That’s got its George V stamp on the side, Howden’s of London. It’s got the arrow on it so would have been to do with the war department. It’s in two sections, with eight drawers in total.
“And we’ve got some nice pottery items; a French wine cooler that’s got a lovely rich honey glaze on it with embossed detail, and a couple of nice comfit pots.”
Another tempting find that’ll be on their stand in Bath is artwork painted on paper that’s been removed from old ledgers. The couple sourced the pictures when they were on holiday in Italy.
“They’re on handmade French paper which has been removed from folios. It’s got handwritten French text all over the paper and on top of that someone has done coloured marine drawings of whales and fish and coral,” Ralph says.
“We sourced those from the monthly antique market in Lucca in Tuscany. We plan our holidays so it’s 90 per cent holiday but I’ll certainly need to get my fix of going to an antique fair. They’ve got everything we look for in a piece… they are decorative and they’ve got history. Another thing that drew us to them was we could put them in our suitcase and still fly without getting a courier involved! That made them particularly attractive,” he says with a laugh.
Like every stand at Bath Decorative Antiques Fair, there’s temptation everywhere.
Ralph says: “You want to put your best show on when you go to Bath because it’s a very smart fair. It’s got a very special feel.”
■ The 35th Bath Decorative Antiques Fair is open on Friday, March 15 and Saturday, March 16, from 11am to 5pm, at The Pavilion, North Parade Road, Bath, BA2 4EU. Admission is £5. Complimentary tickets and a list of exhibitors are available from the website at bathdecorative antiquesfair. co.uk Details can be found on Facebook and @bathdecfair on Instagram.
■ Visit www.ludgatehouseantiques.com or @ludgatehouseantiques on Instagram for Ludgate House Antiques, Old High Street, Falmouth. The next biannual Enys House antiques fair, at Enys Gardens, Penryn, is on April 13 and 14.