Agricultural History Review, Volume 67 Part 1 (2019), p. 138

For readers familiar with record society volumes and used to a brief introduction, a few notes on editorial practices, followed by pages of transcribed documents and a simple index, this book will be a revelation. In her editing of the four household inventories of Helmingham Hall, Suffolk, from 1597 to 1741, Moira Coleman provides an embarrassment of riches not only in the contents of the house, but also in her interpretation. These documents are not left to speak for themselves. The entries, accompanied by lengthy and meticulous footnotes, occupy less than half the pages and are linked to a magnificent glossary and index of household goods of similar length. In addition, there are two substantial appendices on the development of the hall, 1597–1741 and the Tollemaches’ period at Fakenham Magna, 1622–1665.

Coleman begins with a generous introduction outlining the history of Tollemache family, the background of the four inventories compiled in 1597, 1626, 1708 and 1741, and the editorial practices employed. The contents closely reflect the family’s progress from comfortable gentry, to aspiring baronets in the early seventeenth century and finally to wealthy aristocrats in the eighteenth century. Like so many successful landed families, the Tollemaches married well. The big leap came in 1648 when Sir Lionel Tollemach, third baronet, married Elizabeth, daughter and heir of William Murray, first earl of Dysart. When he died in 1655 she inherited the Scottish estates and became the second countess of Dysart in her own right, a common feature of Scottish peerages, which allow female succession in the absence of male heirs. In the Genealogical Table Elizabeth’s husband is credited with the title, but when the sixth earl died in 1821 without heirs, and the title passed to his eldest surviving sister, Louisa, she is rightly described as the seventh countess of Dysart. This is an important point as it led to the division of the estate, between Louisa’s family, who inherited the earldom with its estate at Ham House in Surrey, alongside her husband’s estate in Leicestershire and Lincolnshire, and the family of Jane, the younger sister, whose son, John, inherited the Tollemache estates in Suffolk, Cheshire and Northamptonshire. The situation is confusing as both families adopted the Tollemache name, but it explains the forward, written by ‘The Lord Tollemache, Helmingham’ at the front of the volume and Coleman’s thanks to Sir Lyonel Tollemache for access to the Buckminster Park Archive. A further confusion is that the Tollemache baronetcy granted to the family in 1612 died out with the sixth earl, as it was restricted to male heirs. The baronetcy that survives was created in 1793 for Louisa’s son William Manners, descended through his father from the Dukes of Rutland.

The title continued with the Tollemache family at Buckminster until the ninth earl died in 1935 without heirs. As before, the earldom went through his sister to a niece and her two daughters who served as countesses of Dysart from 1935 to 2011. The present holder, John Grant, thirteenth earl of Dysart, and seventeenth laird of Rothiemurchus, is the son of the younger daughter and a Scottish laird. The baronetcy survived as there was a male Tollemache heir available to inherit the title and the Buckminster estate; they also kept Ham House, which Sir Lyonel Tollemache, fourth baronet, and his son Cecil gave to the National Trust in 1948. The Surrey estate, beautifully situated along the Thames between Richmond and Kingston, was developed in the 1930s and finally sold in 1949. After three centuries, the Tollemache links with the earldom of Dysart and the iconic Ham House were finally severed.

In contrast to this tortuous tale, the estates in Suffolk, Cheshire and Northamptonshire left by the sixth earl to his nephew, John Tollemache, eldest son of his youngest sister Jane, flourished and became a model enterprise. W. E. Gladstone described John ‘as the greatest estate manager of his day’. As MP for Cheshire constituencies from 1841 to 1872, he campaigned for land reform and was raised to the peerage as Baron Tollemache in 1876. His descendants at Helmingham today seem to follow that tradition living in their moated manor house, tending their gardens and managing their historic estates.

Viewed from this perspective, it is almost as if the Tollemaches have turned back to their seventeenth-century forebears with their activities firmly rooted in Suffolk. Lord Tollemache, avidly interested in the history of the family, encouraged Coleman in her venture over many years. She was also supported by Victor Gray, honorary archivist at Helmingham and general editor of the volume and a team of academics, advisers and curators, who notably helped to compile the glossary and index of household goods, and the referencing system which provides easy access to the inventories.

So, how does this ingenious system work? It is quite simple. Each entry has been allotted a reference number: this consists of the year of the inventory, i.e. 97, 26, 08, 41 followed by the order in the listing, which for 1597 runs from 1 to 1216; for 1626 from 1 to 1549, while the later inventories are half that size, making a total of 4091 entries. If, for example, you want to search the close stools, look them up in the glossary either under stools, or close stools, where you will find a full description and the reference number which leads to their location in the hall. So, in 1597 there is one close stool in the Drying chamber, 97.544; three with their pans in the Old Chamber, 97.568; two with their pans in the Wardrobe 97.883; and finally a pan for a close stool in the Soap House, 97.561. So hours of fun await you! I would have preferred the glossary straight after the inventories with the two appendices at the end, but for giving us such a feast of records this minor inconvenience can be forgiven.