Ickworth House – Library
The library at Ickworth House, the largest of the property’s grand rooms and it is located adjoining the dining room. The name feels slightly misleading, as there are books all over the house and this room doesn’t have that many of them. It’s located at the heart of the Rotunda and is a large and expansive space that was also used as a ballroom. The fireplace was brought from Italy and installed by John Field, all part of the Grand Tour influence.
A lot of the books were rebound by Theodora, Lady Bristol, which has rather hidden their true beauty. I don’t like this uniformity, it’s a shame that the original bindings were lost. That’s what happens when books are seen as aesthetic things rather than beautiful in their own damaged right.
These great pillars are giant scagliola columns which cost £332 back when the room was laid out in the 1820s. It’s fair to say, that was a lot of money, somewhere around £35,000 in today’s money. At the same time, the bookshelves were installed, designed by the royal furniture makers Banting, France & Co who also supplied some of the other furniture in the room.
Anyway, onto one of my judgemental comments…. This room was significant in 2015 when the National Trust, under the leadership of Helen Ghosh, made a decision that they wanted people to linger in the room longer and to do that they would take the furniture out and put in bean bags. The mind process is just ridiculous, it’s easy to get people to linger in a room but it’s just as illogical to turn it into a waiting room as it is to fill it with clutter and force visitors to spend longer there as they can’t get around. At the time, the former head curator at the National Trust called the whole thing “misguided” and he seems right to me. After much hilarity from some observers, the National Trust scrapped the new vision after realising it was a bloody stupid one.
A lot of the blame appears to have been dumped by the National Trust onto Sue Borges, and there’s a photo of the bean bag project at Art History News. Borges claimed none of the 9,500 visitors who had gone through that weekend had criticised the arrangement, but the room guides apparently had a different take according to that article and it’s odd that out of such a large audience no-one had a differing view. Normally the Daily Telegraph have an entirely different view on the National Trust to me, as I’ve apparently gone a bit woke, but I’m pleased that wiser heads prevailed. Right, that’s that complaint out of the way and I very much like that they’re taken the historic items they bought back out of storage and restored them to the room.
