Why do we collect things? Does the act somehow pacify our existential worries? Do our stamp sets, our shelves of ceramics and our walls lined with pictures provide a sense of security? Do we accumulate objects in the hope we might somehow be imbued with the essence of their previous owner? Do we do it simply for the joy of acquisition, for the thrill of novelty, for that electrifying buzz of beating someone to the punch?
I suspect many readers of this magazine might casually call themselves a collector, myself included, but I can assure you, any confidence in that appellation will be shaken to the core on seeing the house photographed here. The illustrious tradition of collecting reaches its acme beneath this roof, where the most sensational array of objects have found their home in vast numbers. This is the life’s work of Tom, the owner.
There are great bundles of bookplates; a soup tureen belonging to the Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin; 238 silhouettes, just some of which line the scarlet staircase. You will find trunks packed with fans from the 18th century, hand-painted on chicken skin, paper or silk, most of which only cost a pound or two when first acquired (‘I can tell an 18th-century fan from 50 paces,’ says Tom); innumerable Victorian pink-glass pipes; piles of antiquarian books; a mahogany planchette, used for automatic writing in séances; 17th-century dresses and drawer upon drawer of silk purses – one of which belonged to Marie Antoinette, and was reportedly where she kept the letters from her children while she was imprisoned before her execution. The list goes on. While the subject matter is vast, the core of the collection runs from 1700 to 1800. ‘I’ve always been fascinated by that period: the clothes, the way of living. I’d like to have lived then,’ says Tom, and then, after a thoughtful pause, ‘as long as I could have had anaesthetic.’
The house itself is Elizabethan, with wings added in the 17th and 18th centuries. It was rented out for 50 years in the 19th, and was advertised as having been the first house in town with a flushing lavatory – which, of course, is still in situ. The enviable plumbing, however, was not the deciding factor for Tom, but rather the scale of the rooms, which miraculously could accommodate his collection. An auction took place before he left his last house, and yet it still took nine Luton vans to transport the furniture alone.
At first glance this assortment of objects seems impenetrable, chaotic and sprawling – but order hasn’t been abandoned, and Tom can furnish you with a date and a story for virtually every piece. Most of these items come with a requirement to discover them. Things are hidden in drawers, stashed away in trunks and sealed away in boxes. This is a house, whether by accident or design, that reveals itself to you slowly. Those with patience and grit could surely spend many months trawling through each room and remain surprised at every turn.
Tom’s acquisitive nature wends back some 60 years. By the time he was 15 his bedroom was full to the ceiling and a narrow path had to be cleared to allow access to his bed. ‘I’ve collected things since I was five or six,’ he says. ‘We had a wonderful old lady living next door to us called Ethel who never threw anything away.’ As a boy, already in the business of accumulating pebbles, fossils and feathers, he was a welcome guest and often the recipient of Ethel’s generosity. Her first gift was a velvet box housing scent bottles, which he still owns.
Another was a jet hat pin. Ethel, who had no teeth, was often in possession of large trays of chocolates, which she would beadily survey before using said hat pin to skewer each piece of confectionery, determining how hard it was before tucking in. ‘My sister and I were only allowed to eat the chocolates with holes in them,’ he says. (As it happens, he also collects paintings of women with no teeth, but insists there is no connection.) Another neighbour, Hilda, was equally enamoured by Tom’s passion for things and one Christmas gave him ‘a whole collection of teeny-weeny Edwardian silver pieces of furniture’. Those too are ‘still upstairs’. This should come as no surprise.
‘Patina and provenance’ are what define this collection, he tells me. The majority of pieces are labelled with descriptions and, where possible, a note of whom they belonged to. Tom’s memory for visual detail is forensic and what emerges with every story he tells is his ability to stitch together seemingly disparate objects through time and place. And while each individual item is laden with its own history and meaning, the collection as a whole is remarkable for its potency: it is the culmination of a lifetime’s worth of decisions and indecisions, of missed opportunities and lucky discoveries; of the specific tastes and aspirations that could only come from one person.
Tom has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the complicated tendrils of his own ancestry. He was adopted when he was a few weeks old. With the help of his adoptive mother he traced his birth family when he was in his forties and has formed a relationship with them. He has since hired a genealogist to delve further back. So far, 182 relatives have been unearthed. Rather like his passion for finding antiques, one suspects this is just the start. Tom’s belief that ‘provenance and patina are the most important things’ takes on a profound meaning in this context. ‘I think the fact I’m not quite sure where I come from has a lot to do with this collecting bug,’ he says. ‘It’s about being able to place myself.’ Because, of course, provenance is not just about understanding what objects were, it is about remembering who people are.
A version of this article appeared in the February 2024 issue of The World of Interiors. Learn about our subscription offers
