Composite service of Old English spoons and forks
Category
Silver
Date
1763 - circa 1900
Materials
Silver
Order this imageCollection
Saltram, Devon
NT 872312
Summary
A composite Old English pattern table and dessert service, mostly silver, various makers, London, Exeter and Amsterdam, dates ranging from 1763 to circa 1900. Comprising 41 table spoons, 56 table forks, 39 dessert spoons, 36 dessert forks, 10 sauce ladles and four serving spoons. LONDON William Tuite (possibly): 2 serving spoons, 1763/4. Parker crest and baron’s coronet. Unknown (mark illegible): 3 sauce ladles, probably 1764/5. Parker crest and baron’s coronet. Thomas Chawner: 6 tablespoons, 1771-6; 7 dessert spoons, 1775/6. Parker crest. Unknown (all marks illegible): 1 dessert spoon, circa 1780. Engraved ‘R’. Thomas Northcote: 28 table forks, 1780-84. Parker crest beneath baron’s coronet. John Bourne (possibly): 1 tablespoon, 1782/3. Entwined initials ‘JBW’. James Young: 2 serving spoons, 1784/5. Newcombe crest. Hester Bateman: 1 tablespoon, 1788/9, Parker crest and baron’s coronet. Richard Crossley: 3 table forks, 1812/13; 9 dessert spoons, 1793/4; 7 dessert forks (probably), 1812/13; 4 sauce ladles, 1812/13. Parker crest. George Smith III and William Fearn: 22 tablespoons, 1794/5; 5 table forks, 1794/5; 22 dessert spoons, 1794/5; 23 dessert forks, 1794-6. Parker crest and baron’s coronet. 2 tablespoons, 1795/6. Parker crest. Unknown (mark illegible): 3 table forks, 1802/3. Parker crest. William Eley I and William Fearn: 6 table forks, 1803-5. Parker crest and baron’s coronet. Peter and William (I) Bateman: 1 tablespoon, 1805/6. Purvis crest and motto. Samuel Godbehere and Company: 3 sauce ladles, 1807/8. Dickin crest. Richard Crossley and George Smith IV: 2 tablespoons, 1808/9; 7 table forks, 1808/9 (1 at Knightshayes). Parker crest. William Chawner II: 1 tablespoon, 1831/2; 1 dessert fork, 1831/2. Parker crest and baron’s coronet. BIRMINGHAM Thomas Wilkinson & Sons: 4 table forks (plated), circa 1900. Engraved ‘S’. EXETER Thomas Byne (c.1803-60): 3 dessert forks, 1846/7. Parker crest. AMSTERDAM Roelof Helweg (1758-1843): 5 tablespoons, 1802, Parker crest. Two dessert forks were not located for inspection in 2024, having been stolen whilst on loan to Buckland Abbey.
Full description
The larger part of this service is that likely to have been acquired by John Parker, 2nd Lord Boringdon (later 1st Earl of Morley, 1772-1840) in the 1780s (28 table forks by Thomas Northcote) and 1790s (24 tablespoons, 22 dessert spoons and 23 dessert forks). All are engraved with the Parker crest beneath a baron’s coronet. The spoons and dessert forks are of an unusually thin gauge suggesting that Lord Boringdon may well have traded in much of his father’s heavier service as provided by George Wickes and Samuel Netherton from 1755 onwards (National Art Library, Garrard Ledgers, VAM 5, George Wickes and Samuel Netherton, Gentlemen’s Ledger, 1750-55) . He would thus have either secured a larger quantity at limited additional cost, or have been able to release some cash value. Three sauce ladles and two serving spoons survive from the earlier service. According to the 1886 Saltram plate list (NT, Saltram) there were then 132 table forks, 102 tablespoons, 36 dessert forks and 37 dessert spoons. Such large numbers were required for dinner ‘a la Francaise’ at which all the dishes were on the table and knives, forks and spoons were changed with each course and as requested by diners. Long handled serving spoons were needed to reach dishes beyond the diner’s immediate vicinity. The spoons and forks are confirmed to have been almost entirely late 18th century by what survives at Saltram and by those dispersed at the Sotheby’s sale of the late 4th Earl of Morley’s silver, 19th January 1956, lots 129-134. None of the 119 associated silver-handled table knives and 38 dessert knives, as listed in 1886, survives at Saltram. The 1st Lord Boringdon had acquired two dozen silver handled table knives from George Wickes and Samuel Netherton in 1755. These, like his spoons and forks, are likely to have been exchanged by his successors. There are sets of silver-handled table and dessert knives at Saltram, to make up for these losses, the table knives being engraved with the Newcombe crest (NT 872319) and the dessert knives with the Parker crest alone (NT 872406). The remainder of this composite service is made up predominantly of spoons and forks of varying dates and makers engraved with the Parker crest alone for the branch of the family founded by the 1st Lord Boringdon’s brother, Montagu Edmund Parker (1737-1813), and seated at Whiteway, near Chudleigh in Devon. Their heiress, Harriet Parker (1809-97), married the 2nd Earl of Morley and thus the two collections of silver were brought together on her death in 1897. In the 1880 plate list of Whiteway there were 131 tablespoons, 53 dessert spoons, 67 table forks and 24 dessert forks. Of these 53 tablespoons and 30 table forks plus all the dessert spoons and forks were of the Old English pattern and engraved with the Parker crest. Some at least, judging by the evidence of what survives at Saltram, were acquired at the time that Montagu Edmund Parker acquired Whiteway by his exchange with the 1st Lord Boringdon in 1774, shortly after the completion of the building [1]. Most were London-made but there are surviving at Saltram five of a set of twelve tablespoons of 1802 by Roelof Helwg of Amsterdam and three dessert spoons of 1846/7 by Thomas Byne of Exeter. The 1886 plate list specifies a further 24 tablespoons, also bearing the Parker crest, as ‘old pattern’, which probably means the Hanoverian in which the terminal is turned up rather than the Old English where it is turned down. Also from the Parkers of Whiteway is an associated set of six dessert knives with King’s pattern handles (NT 872406) from 24 recorded in 1880 and a carving knife and fork with reeded handles (NT 872323). Almost all of the rest of the spoons and forks listed at Whiteway in 1880 related to the Newcombe family whose heiress, an earlier Harriet (1788-1877), married the second Montagu Edmund Parker (1778-1831). They were mostly engraved with the Newcombe crest of a raven, wings expanded, on a mural coronet, or with initials. None of their table and dessert spoons and forks survives at Saltram today but there are two of their serving spoons in this service and, in addition, the three sauce ladles with the Dickin crest (a lion couchant holding a cross patonce with its right paw) were inherited, along with other items, by Harriet Newcombe from her aunt and uncle, John (d. 1850) and Sophia (d. 1834) Dickin. The Newcombe table knives (NT 872319) have been referred to above. A set of plated table forks, the terminals of which are engraved with the letter ‘S’, have become associated with this service but should actually be listed along with the matching table spoons (NT 872385). These, together with dessert spoons and forks (NT 872388 & 872389), may perhaps have been acquired for use by the upper servants, the ‘S’ standing for Saltram. Finally there are three pieces which appear to have no connection to Saltram and probably became associated with this service after the departure of the family: a table spoon engraved with the crest and motto of the Purvis family, a tablespoon of 1782/3 with the initials ‘JBW’ and a dessert spoon of circa 1780 engraved with the initial ‘R’. They are likely to have been donated to the National Trust, perhaps along with the table spoons recorded under NT 872386 which are noted as not having been listed at Saltram before 1980. Two of those also bear the Purvis crest and motto (sun emerging from clouds and 'CLARIOR E TENEBRIS'). James Rothwell, National Curator July 2025 NOTE [1] For more on the history of Whiteway see Hugh Meller, The Country Houses of Devon, 2015, vol. II, pp. 1091-3.
Provenance
John Parker, 1st Lord Boringdon (1734/5-88) and his brother Montagu Edmund Parker (1737-1813) of Whiteway with additions by their successors and acquisitions through marriage; by descent to Montagu Brownlow Parker, 5th Earl of Morley (1878-1962); most pieces accepted by HM Treasury in lieu of full payment of Estate Duty from the Executors of Edmund Robert Parker, 4th Earl of Morley (1877-1951) and transferred to the National Trust in 1957.Some items probably acquired by the National Trust after 1957 and not previously from Saltram.
Credit line
Saltram, the Morley Collection (National Trust)