A rare William & Mary joined oak and glazed bookcase or display case on stand, circa 1690


Having a pair of eight-pane doors, enclosing three fixed shelves, with twin fielded-panelled sides, the stand with five baluster-turned legs, joined all round by plain platform stretchers, on ball-turned feet, 131cm wide x 41cm deep x 203cm high, (51 1/2in wide x 16in deep x 79 1/2in high)
|Provenance:The Timms family, 'Help Out' Mill, Odstone, Market Bosworth, LeicestershireFrom 4th July 1972 with Roger Warner, The High Street, Burford, OxfordshireSold Christie's, 'The Roger Warner Collection', South Kensington, 20 - 21 January 2009, Lot 318Exhibited:The Merchant's House, Marlborough, Wiltshire, 2009-2018.According to Historic England, 'Help Out' Mill - a water drive corn mill - was owned by the Timms family from 1734, only passing out of their ownership on the death of Elijah T. Timms in 1970. The family were of some means and in 1818 the mill and attached acres of land - the freehold of which was owned by the family - were recorded as being worth £1000. The census of 1841 records Samuel Timms, 60, as 'miller and farmer', living at the mill with his wife, Ann, and their two sons Richard and Elijah, then 20 and 18 respectively. By the time the census of 1861 was taken, Elijah, then 38, had taken over farming '153 acres' whilst running the mill. In 1901 and 1911, Elizabeth Timms, widow, is recorded as running the mill, helped by her son (also called Elijah) and several mill workers. The family were prosperous enough by then to keep a domestic staff.The present brick-built mill and attached house - Top House Farm - date from the first two decades of the 19th century, and are on a site occupied by a mill since 1313. The name 'Help Out' Mill is said to derive from the mill's ability, thanks to its advantageous position on the River Sence, to supply other mills when water was in short supply.See a celebrated set of twelve free-standing oak bookcases, made for the diarist Samuel Pepys [1633-1703], now in the collection of Magdalene College, Cambridge, with comparable glazed upper-sections.