Sir John Leveson-Gower at Home

Description:The Sutherland Papers include ‘An Inventory of the goods cattles & chattels of the Rt Honourable John Lord Gower Barron of Stitnam’. This Inventory, taken on 23rd February 1709 details the rooms and furniture at ‘Lilleshall Lodge in the County of Salop’.

Sir John’s inventory tells us a great deal about his wealth and the kind of lifestyle which he led. The inventory reveals that Lilleshall Lodge was large and lavish, fully furnished and stylishly decorated in co-ordinating colours.

The inventory begins by describing ‘the Kitchen’. This room was furnished to be functional, housing multiple ‘racks’ iron grates, pot racks and also ‘eight spits’. The kitchen also contained ‘one Long Table 2 Formes 3 Small Tables one liverie table’ and ‘6 dressors & shelves’. There were also ‘4 lether chaires’ and a number of stools, alongside numerous pewter plates, flagons and basins. There were also pots and a kettle made of brass. The size of the kitchen and the extensive functional furnishings it housed indicates that Lilleshall Lodge was fitted to cater elaborate meals for large parties. Indeed, the house also had two pantries and adjoining the kitchen was a scullery which housed ‘one iron furnace 2 dressors’ and ‘one chopping block’. The house was evidently furnished to meet the demanding social requirements of someone in Sir John’s prominent public position.

The Inventory tells us that Lilleshall Lodge also had two drawing rooms and a number of other reception rooms including two dining rooms. In the ‘best dineing room’ the inventory states that there was ‘one Large Oval table one couch one Elbow Chair 7 Small Chairs, 2 red window curtains one Iron Grate’. The Lodge also had a ‘Little dineing room’. These rooms may have been used for dining with and entertaining guests.

The elaborate decoration of Lilleshall Lodge is detailed in the Inventory, which tell us that rooms were furnished in co-ordinating colours. The Inventory lists three separate rooms known as ‘the Green room’, ‘the red room’ and ‘the Large Gray room’. The Green Room housed ‘one pair of Bedstids with green Curtains and foot and head Balance, one feather bed & boulster one green Counterpain one table and green table cloth one green window curtain 4 Green Chairs, 2 green Cloth Stools' and 'three Leather Chairs’. These rooms were evidently lavishly decorated with colour co-ordinated curtains and bed linen. In the gray room there was ‘one feather bed boulster & bedstids with gray Curtains, head & foot Balance’ and ‘one table’ with a ‘Gray table cloth’. The gray room was the most extensive of these colour co-ordinated rooms, having two small adjoining rooms which were similarly furnished.