The great castle clear-out uncovers a vast amount of cash in the attic
Is that grotty bust by Rodin – or Homebase? Is that a dusty Degas? Yes, it’s time to play Posh ‘Cash in the Attic’...
It’s not a bad sum for an attic sale of bric-a-brac. This week, the 25th Earl of Sutherland flogged a load of “clutter” from his Scottish castle and made a tidy £732,000. Long before the auction kicked off in Bonhams’ Edinburgh saleroom, it had been dubbed “the attic sale of the century” since it included various rare items which a Bonhams spokesman, with great theatricality, claimed “had never seen the light of day.”
Intrigued, I had a quick flick through the auction catalogue on the morning of the sale. I’ve finally been granted planning permission for my small patch of south-east London, which is nothing like a turreted Scottish castle, but perhaps a Spode chamber pot, potentially once used by Queen Victoria, would make a nice window box once the builders have finished?
It did seem a terrifically eccentric collection: as well as the chamber pots, the catalogue listed a couple of stuffed hares, a large pair of “moose or elk antlers”, a set of Victorian pewter ice-cream moulds, pistols, muskets and a pair of very old wooden skis. The only thing I seriously thought of bidding on was a couple of Afghan rugs, cheapest of all the lots at around £100 a pop. Quite jolly, I thought, to have a tatty old rug from a Scottish castle in my sitting room rather than Ikea. Having downloaded the Bonhams app, however, the technology failed me so I couldn’t bid and, anyway, the rugs later went for hundreds more than guide price (as did the chamber pots, for which some pervert paid £1,083).
The last attic clear-out that my family endured wasn’t anything like as fascinating. It was my step-sister’s attic in Norwood which had to be emptied before she moved house a few months ago. As the oldest of all my siblings, and the only one with children as well as a highly efficient and organised accountant, she kept almost every single item that her daughters wore for their first few years of life in large plastic boxes. Around 30 whopping plastic boxes, to be precise, all clean, ironed and labelled: 0-3 months, 3-6 months and so on. My siblings and I were quite nervous about these boxes. Who should take them? Who’d be next to run that gauntlet? Who had space? My step-brother, newly engaged, eyed the boxes as one might a skittish horse but eventually agreed he was the most likely beneficiary.
Much of my time at Tatler was spent tiptoeing through old attics since whenever the owner of a big house clonked it, I would be sent to interview the new heir. I’ve never forgotten the time I went to Gloucestershire to look around the Elizabethan house Elmore Court. Its new owner, Anselm Guise, had taken over from his uncle and recently finished the long, arduous process of tidying the place up. Among the gems he’d discovered in the attic was a box of string with a label on it that read “Pieces of string which have no use any more.”
On the basis of the subsequent piece, a TV company got in touch to pitch a new show called Upstairs, Downstairs in which Nicky Haslam would waltz around the drawing rooms being rude about the sofa and curtains, while I trawled through the attics dressed in a Victorian maid’s uniform. I believe I speak for everybody attached to this project when I say it’s probably best that nothing ever came of it.