Description:The Sutherland Papers include many wills and inventories detailing the property owned by the Leveson family during the sixteenth century. The inventories relating to Sir John Leveson (1555-1615) provide an insight into his lifestyle, and reflect the types of material objects valued by people living at this time.
‘An Inventorie taken of ye goodes and chattel of Sir John Leveson Knight’ taken on 19th December 1615 at his property in Lilleshall suggests Sir John's house there had over forty rooms, in addition to gardens and stables.
The inventory provides details of the furnishings in each of these rooms, many of which included bedsteads, embroidered chairs and multiple tables. The inventory indicates the wealth of the Leveson family at this time.
The inventory indicates that ‘the dyning chamber’ was furnished with a ‘longe drawinge table’ and also a ‘short table’. The room included six ‘redd leather chears’ and sixteen ‘redd leather stooles’. An adjoining chamber held ‘one great waynskott chest’ which may have been used to store the extensive amouny of linen owned by the family. In addition to a wide range of ‘towells’ and ‘pillowbeares, the family owned ‘one dossen damask napkins’ and a range of ‘bolsters’, ‘coverletts’ and long flaxen ‘tableclothes’.
The inventory tells us that many of the rooms in the house were ‘matted’. The list of furnishings in the ‘best matted chamber’ includes a ‘Beadstedd’ and also ‘one blew silk quilt’, ‘one cheare 2 stooles embroydered’ and ‘one cheare 2 stooles blew damask’. The inventory also lists many curtains, a notable pair being ‘of white and greene silk’.
The house also included a ‘pantree’ and a ‘kytchin’ which was furnished with brass utensils and also a ‘bathowse’, which had a pair of bellows kept in it.
In addition to the furnishings listed, there is an entry for ‘One Bible and five prayer Bookes’. This suggests that the family may have read religious texts individually or perhaps together in a group, where one person would read aloud to the household.