Birmingham: Country House Libraries

Country house libraries and a case study of the library at Linley Wood.
Presenter – JJ Heath-Caldwell

In the 1700s and 1800s many of the old English gentry families amassed considerable collections of books in their country house libraries. These collections were a vast range of books passed down from ancestors, relatives, and friends of the family over the generations. Most of these country houses and their contents are now long gone, the majority having been sold off in the mid-1900s. Some of these books can be found today in antiquarian bookshops, often with bookplates or inscriptions just inside the front cover giving a clue to their original owner.

JJ Heath-Caldwell gives this talk about country house libraries and a case study of the library at Linley Wood, in Staffordshire, the home of the Caldwell family from 1789 to 1949. The core of this library was established by James Caldwell (1759-1838) with many of the books, and other family relics, coming from families with names Bentley, Coape, Crompton, Hacker, Martin and Stamford. Later generations then brought additional books and relics from the Crowe, Cuthbert, Dalton, Heath, Helsham, Hesketh, Jones, Long, Marsh and Moore families.