The Winner | The Collections Award 2024 | Historic Houses x Dreweatts

Grimsthorpe has been part of the Willoughby family for over 500 years, given as a present by Henry VIII and members of the family have lived here ever since. The Willoughby family have been very involved with the monarchy for centuries, starting with the office of Lord Great Chamberlain in 1626 and you were allowed to choose pieces of furniture from the Palace of Westminster to bring to your own home. So obviously this enlarged the collection here. The collection has been added to during the last 500 years by various members of the family and we have lost things along the way. We have probably the largest selection of royal thrones outside the royal palaces, tables used for coronation oaths as well as beds which have been created from the backdrops to royal thrones. So we have here a pair of André Charles Boulle tables which are outstanding examples of their type. We have a huge amount of family portraits and this really tells the story of Grimsthorpe over five centuries and also of monarchs they were closely connected with. One of my favourites is the one of James I of England and VI of Scotland and James's wife Anne of Denmark. They came to visit Grimsthorpe in 1611 and also a bureau plat by Charles Crescent came from the House of Lords after the fire in 1834 as a perquisite but it's a very important piece, it's got impeccable provenance and of course it's by Charles Crescent who was an outstanding maker of his day. We have started to put on exhibitions here. This year we are displaying a Doublet and Troncos which we have had restored extensively and very very rare so it's wonderful to be able to get that out and add it to the narrative of Grimsthorpe in a meaningful way. So today's visitor can walk through a series of effectively Tudor rooms but they can experience the different layers of collecting and interior decorating over the centuries. There were various points at which redecoration was carried out. There's really something for everyone there. Collecting still goes on here today by the family. In the last 20 years we've managed to recover a pair of very important chairs by William Hallett and also Lady Jane who's the current Baroness Willoughby-Tiersby continues with her own collecting practices. This is an amazing opportunity that we have won this award this year. It's a great validation of the extraordinary work that our quite small team here at Grimsthorpe does and Druids have very generously given us some money to spend which is wonderful. We're hoping to extend our storage facilities here and also to conserve the Thornhill paintings in the Vanbrugh Hall which we're doing as part of the Vanbrugh Tercentenary. I think it's great for the visitors. They are able to come and see that we are working hard on all these projects really for them.