FROM CLOCKS TO TAXIDERMY
Amazing hoard of treasures found in old manor house
TIME HAD stood still – as had the old Leeds Station clock that kept it – in Chris Martins’ old manor house in the Vale of York.
The £800,000 property known as Helperby Manor, in a village five miles west of Easingwold, was not small but neither, under his ownership, was it spacious.
“You walked in through the front door and there were post boxes tucked behind it.
“He had about 40 grandfather clocks in there,” said Steve Stockton, the auctioneer now tasked with cataloguing them all.
Mr Martins, who died earlier this year at 71, was a retired public relations man whose collection of ephemera was his life’s work.
“Every wall was covered in pictures, and every usable bit of space was filled with bits and pieces,” Mr Stockton said.
“It was absolutely crazy – just like a museum.”
Unlike a museum, however, Mr Martins’ collection was not curated.
A glass case of stuffed animals sat uncomfortably with a higgledy-piggledy row of Victorian toilets. In one room, a printing press sat for no obvious reason.
Off the kitchen was one of the largest assortment of cheese dishes ever seen in one place.
“There was a whole load of
shop tills and weird kitchen gadgets – butter churns and devices for slicing and dicing – alongside advertisements and some quite good standard antiques and silver jewellery,” said Mr Stockton, whose firm, Tennants at Leyburn, will auction 400 of the items on January 5.
“He’d also had a house in France, and he’d collected quite a lot of good 19th and 20th century English and French landscapes and antiquarian maps.
“It’s not of massive value but it’s a really interesting collection.”
Among the art is a sketch, dated 1941, by the Yorkshire artist Joseph Appleyard of Leyburn cattle auction. Not a single one of the attendees is shown without a hat – a cap for the workers and something more formal for the buyers.
The old clock from Leeds Station bears the insignia of the local horology firm William Potts, whose timepieces were also installed on the city’s Corn Exchange and Town Hall.
Mr Martins, who lived in the manor house with his wife, was originally a hotelier and had become a tourism director in York and Bournemouth.
Described by colleagues as a marketing genius, he specialised in dreaming up ideas that would generate publicity – at one point conducting 40 interviews with radio stations on why it was a good idea to always take a dog to meetings.
He was also an amateur archeologist, gaining a postgraduate degree and volunteering his time to the Prince’s Trust.
“We had a long chat about what he was going to do with his items,” Mr Stockton said. “We agreed we would we could take the whole lot and deal with them.
“He was interested in absolutely everything – one of those very intelligent people who liked to have lots of projects going on and who threw himself into whatever caught his eye.
“He had a stamp and coin collection, and his archeological finds were also quite extensive – there was a cabinet full of medieval and Roman pieces.”
Other items to go up for sale include magic lantern projectors, rugs and furniture.
He was one of those very intelligent people who liked lots of projects. Steve Stockton, the auctioneer tasked with cataloguing the collection.