With the scaffolding platform covering the entire area of the Library, work on the ceiling is much easier. The conservators from Hare & Humphrey have found evidence of a lot of previous piece-meal restoration, some of it within the last fifty years or so, (though no one has any memory of this). It is unlikely that previous restorers had, in effect, a false floor to work from, and they would probably have been up a ladder, or at best on a small scaffolding tower. The platform brings everything within arms’ reach, as you can see from the photograph. It makes the job a lot quicker and also a lot safer. The boxed area you can see in this picture of the east wall is the top of the fireplace, carefully protected from any possible harm.

With the heraldic shields and the small crests masked off (the areas covered in plain white paper), all the areas between the shields have been treated with a mild paint-stripper. This comes as watery paste, which smells of almonds – which is slightly alarming as anything which smells as almonds is usually cyanide! Despite its smell the chemical does not give off fumes and safety breathing gear in not required when it is being applied, nor while it dries.

The stripper is then covered with a special paper strip – seen with black print on it in the photo – which will be peeled off after a couple of days, and will bring the stripper and the top layer of paint with it. This will obviously bring the surface dirt off too. Once the paper has been removed it is not hazardous waste and does not require special disposal measures. As well as atmospheric dirt the worst of the discoloured will have come from years of open fires, plus cigar and cigarette smoke. The conservators think that the ceiling paints will have become discoloured quite quickly, and the family will have enjoyed them at their brightest only briefly.

In the photo above the area at the top of the triangular element, including the blue and red device, has had the top layer stripped away to reveal the original paint colour – a pale grey/green. With the covering paper pulled away all the surfaces will be restored to this tone.

Highly skilled professionals in ill-fitting white suits apply the paint stripper.

Thanks to the platform we can now get up close to the ceiling bosses, which reproduce the crests on the coving discussed in last week’s post. Here we see better examples of the elephant and castle of the Corbet family, the head of a tethered bear – the crest of the Breretons, and the dog with his tongue so rudely stuck out (a talbot; see https://combermere-restoration.co.uk/wp-admin/post.php?post=346&action=edit) which in this instance denotes the Grosvenor family – the Dukes of Westminster (whose seat at Eaton Hall is some sixteen miles north by north west as the crow flies).

We will come to the Cotton arms soon, in all its variations, but on this shield the left hand side is described in heraldic terms as “Azure, a chevron between three cotton hanks palewise Argent”. The hanks are the figures of eight; representing lengths of carded cotton tied up for ease of transportation. There is no evidence of the family making cotton; the device merely comes from the surname. The chevron – from the French word of the same spelling meaning rafter (as in the roof of a house, and indicating protection) – was granted to someone who had done a special service for their monarch and country. The red rose is the symbol of the house of Lancaster, of course.

The ‘basic’ shield of the Cotton family.

  No, it’s not a Cistercian monk in one of their distinctive grey habits, time-travelled forward half a millenium to assist with the conservation; just one of the ‘wet’ tradesmen.

With a full scaffolding platform in place in the Library the conservators can now get right up to the ceiling. This allows close examination of elements which have only previously been seen through binoculars or telephoto lenses.

The first thing that is obvious – even more apparent than it is from ground level – is how the plaster has twisted out of shape over the years. The two longer sides are both very distorted, but the conservators have tested the plasterwork and say that it is secure and in no danger of falling, which is very good news.

  The coving over where the east wall meets the ceiling shows considerable distortion.

If anything the coving on the west is more deformed, but the plaster is secure both in its fixings and in itself

The wood effect around the coats of arms was not painted onto the plaster, as first thought, but was printed paper. This presumably dates from early in Queen Victoria’s reign. We do not know whether it was printed especially for this application or was a commercially-available product.

Printed ‘wallpaper’ may have been bought in as is.

On the upper edges of the coving, close to the ceiling, there are a number of curious devices, individually placed and with no apparent relationship to each other. These are the crests of neighbouring Cheshire families, in each case taken out of context from the relevant coat of arms. Viscount Combermere was presumably associating himself with the other grandees of west Cheshire, especially those who were far grander and had held titles for much longer.

The hound with his tongue sticking out is the crest of the Grosvenor family; now the massively wealthy Dukes of Westminster. Their place in the aristocracy dates back to 1622 when Richard Grosvenor was created baronet. The line became earls in 1784, marquesses in 1831, and dukes in 1874 – so at the time of Viscount Combermere’s inserting their crest into his ceiling, the head of the house was the Marquess of Westminster (he was also Earl Grosvenor, Viscount Belgrave, Baron Grosvenor, so he stood well ahead of Combermere in the order of precedence.

The dog on the crest is a talbot, a breed of scent hound used for medieval hunting. The talbot has now died out – though the beagle and the bloodhound are descended from it. It was usually white and had large ears, and it is the crest of the Earls of Shrewsbury as well as the Dukes of Westminster (as well as other families – and the town of Sudbury in Suffolk.  In heraldry it is always shown with its tongue protruding, often lolling out of its mouth to its left side. The Talbot is a common name for a pub.

The griffin holding a knight’s helmet is the crest of the Marquess of Cholmondeley, whose northern seat, Cholmondeley Castle, is only a short distance from Combermere Abbey. Robert Cholmondeley was created viscount in 1661, his grandson – Hugh – was made an Earl in 1706, and they were created marquesses in 1815. The current Marquess, the seventh, is Lord Great Chamberlain of England. He became Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order in 2007.

Unlike the other crests, which are plaster mouldings, this bird has been painted directly on to the surface of the coving. Unsure of what we had here I asked for help from Martin Goldstraw, an expert in Cheshire heraldry. He says; “I can see that it is basically a bird that is black in colour upon a gold shield. The fifth quarter of the arms of Brereton of Brereton are those of Corbet. The arms of Corbet are Or, two ravens Sable (a gold shield upon which are two corbies or ravens black in colour). The basic arms of Corbet are Or, a (single) raven Sable”. That is fascinating on several counts. We know of connections between the Cottons and the Corbets, and the famous ghost photo of the second Viscount Combermere, taken during his funeral, was the work of Sybil Corbet, a close family friend.

This is an elephant and castle crest. This has many associations in England; it is the emblem of The Worshipful Company of Cutlers, it appears on the shield of arms of Coventry City Council, and the phrase is often thought to refer to Queen Eleanor, being a corruption of Infanta de Castille. Not far from Combermere, at Peckforton, there is a large stone carving of an elephant and Castle in front of a cottage. That dates from 1859 and is Grade II listed, but this crest bears no relation to Peckforton (or its then owner, Baron Tollemache). Once again it is a link to the Cortbet family of Shropshire. As Martin Goldstraw explains;  “The Corbet arms explain the connection with the elephant and castle as the Corbet crest is An elephant Argent, on his back a castle triple towered Or, trappings of the last and Sable.”

The eagle and child is the crest of the Stanley family; the Earls of Derby. The title was first granted to Robert Ferrers in 1139. The sixth Earl forfeited his property toward the end of the reign of Henry III and died in 1279. The title  was created again for the Stanley family in 1485, so it is a very ancient peerage. The seat of the Earls of Derby is at Knowsley in south Lancashire (now Merseyside); a few miles the other side of the River Mersey. The current Earl Derby is the nineteenth.

We first thought that this plaque is of a horse’s head, with reins, and the crescent probably indicates cadency (a younger branch of the family) – though a crescent can either note someone who has been honoured by their monarch, or they may date from the Crusades. Thankfully Martin Goldstraw could identify the animal better than we could; ” I would lay odds on your horse’s head being the bear’s head crest of Brereton of Ashley. It is their crest, a bear’s head erased Sable, muzzled Gules, a crescent for cadency or the crest of Brereton of Malpass.  The arms of Brereton of Malpas  do not have a crescent for cadency on the crest itself however the arms themselves do feature a crescent for the second son. ” Brereton is an ancient and distinguished Cheshire surname. Breretons have been gentry in various parts the county for centuries; Sir William Brereton was a Parliamentary commander during the English Civil War and he commanded the garrison at Nantwich through the Royalist siege of 1643.  Brereton Hall is a Grade I listed country house in east Cheshire dating from 1586.

The half quatrefoil  panels are filled with rather obscure images painted on to shaped pieces of paper. The images may become easier to understand once they have been cleaned.

This one, showing the Cotton crest and motto (“In Vitraque Foruna Paratos”) has been repaired. It seems that a new piece of paper has been rather roughly cut out and pasted over the original. The joins are very apparent up close.

The original workmanship in the corners of the plaster coving is dreadful. A fairly complex chamfer is needed, but this seems to have been beyond the skill of the builders. These junctions are very awkward, and it is hard to understand why corrections were not demanded.

At the south end of the Library a wood carving of the Cotton crest of a falcon stands on a metal plinth. Its left claw rests on a torse, while the right is holding what may be a belt and buckle. This device appears appears elsewhere in slightly different form. There is nothing similar elsewhere on the Cotton or Combermere arms.

The shields are secured through the plaster to the beams by two bolts, one either side, two thirds of the way up each shield. The head of the bolt has then been covered in plaster in each case, which is moulded into a vertical piece. In several places there has been movement and the plaster moulding has cracked horizontally below the bolt head. Securing the nuts on the other end of the each bolt, deep in the roof space, must have a difficult task.

The wood-effect printed paper behind each coat of arms can be seen in the photograph above, with the bolts loosened off. This paper has been painted over at some point. Perhaps the brown of the wood-effect was too dark and didn’t allow the shields to be seen to their best advantage.

The conservators’ workbench, with their plan of the ceiling mouldings, and gold leaf taken from the ceiling. The first phase of the conservation work will take some five or six weeks. There will then be a two week drying-out gap before final work resumes.

The north end of the roof space, showing what seem to be early Tudor carved beams.

Being in the roof space above The Library at Combermere Abbey is a truly awe-inspiring experience. Everything you can see and touch has it own place in the history of this ancient building, and up here – where few humans have ever been – you are surrounded by very immediate evidence of hundreds of years of that history.

The Library has long been the most important room in the house. It is today, and it was previously The Abbot’s Lodging – the impressive and luxurious centre of the pre-Dissolution Abbey. A dendrochronology survey is mooted in the near future, and indeed only those results will really explain what we can see below the roof and above the Library ceiling. We know that the room was re-built in the reign of Henry VII, and may well have been altered by builders working for the Cotton family after the Dissolution.  We do not know if the roof was re-built on either occasion.

The arched beams at either end have been carved on their lower edges, and were obviously intended to be seen, so this must be the monastic open roof. There is carved foliage at each apex, where the curved sections meet, but in each case this has been sawn off (slightly roughly, but definitely not knocked off), and the reason for this is unclear. It may have been cut away for clearance when other timbers were inserted. None of the oak securing pegs, once pushed into place, have been cut off on either face of the main timbers, which is surprising, given that this was to be seen from below.

At the northern end there is a simple timber frame with infilling, and one lower panel in the centre has been left open, as if for access. It gives access to an area just a couple of feet in depth, and it is hard to say why there is this partition. It is in this section that there is definite evidence of a large baldacchino; a canopy which would have been draped with fabric on the two sides and perhaps the rear, indicated his status and keeping bat and bird droppings off his table.

In a number of places there is evidence of repair. This patching has been done very          crudely. Plaster has been daubed over a timber repair on the upper-most one.

The plaster ceiling in The Library was built towards the end of the Seventeenth century, and lathes will have been put in place under the main timbers at the point, from which to hang it – beneath new, curved, full-width beams.  There are much smaller, secondary beams to either side of these main cross-beams, which appear to be of a different timber. These look like latter additions, though it is unlikely that they were for extra support; perhaps they were installed to give a greater face area for the ceiling to be pinned to.  There are iron supporting staples throughout. These are hand-made and as there are no other signs of fixings or fixing holes, it is reasonable to assume that these are contemporaneous with the beams and lathes. There are also some iron straps supporting lengths of the older, arched beams, where cracks have appeared.

On the western side of the roof space a large timber has been introduced at some point, doubtless as a repair, to add support. It has been bolted to the (presumably) Tudor timbers where it crosses them. The older beams have been cut into to horizontally (and possibly vertically, to a smaller degree) to accommodate the later beam. Access to this timber is currently difficult, but it is about eighteen inches square, by more than thirty feet long.  This means it would weigh about four tonnes. How this was put in place, more than thirty feet from the ground, and with the earlier beams still in position, is hard to imagine. It could not have been introduced from either the north or the south, given that there are gables at both ends. As it sits on the later transverse beams it looks like a later repair, so it is unlikely that it was raised from within The Library (even then, getting it into the building would seem impossible).  The beam is straight and true, which could suggest that it is relatively modern; a dendrochronology date would be fascinating. No matter what its date, raising it and bringing it into place would have been a massive and very difficult undertaking.

On the eastern side of the roof space, running the full length, is a what looks like a two inch square beam – which at first glance seems odd. It is in fact the fully-boxed cable ducting, dating from when electricity was first introduced into the house in the mid-Twentieth century.

There have been some recent finds of detritus in the roof space; a bottle which at first glance looks to be early Victorian, several hand-made staples and nails, a small piece of light brown pottery (part of the rim of a drinking vessel or a jar), and a definitely Twentieth century (empty) packet of Woodbine cigarettes.

Finds from the roof space. It is horrifying to think that at some point (possibly when electricity was introduced to the Abbey) workmen have been smoking up there!

This is a strange image. It’s a picture of The Library – but it doesn’t make any sense. The detail is very fine and absolutely accurate; look at the joints in the coving in the two corners – they are different from each other, and reflect exactly how they do indeed look, and there is even the falcon above the central panel in the middle of the far wall – as there is today.All the portraits are correct, both between the windows and above the fireplace.

It could at first glance be the room in Tudor times, given the clothing on the figures, except for the fact that the ceiling wasn’t inserted until well over a century later, and the coats of arms on the coving in fact date from the mid-Nineteenth century. The central light fixture is wrong though (and how is it supposed to work; where are the candles?), and the table in the middle of the room is obviously High Victorian Gothick Revival. The clock inside the ‘cloche’ on the right is Victorian, as is the face-height screen to the right of the fire (designed to stop ladies’ faces flushing in the glow of the hearth). Also, it is highly unlikely that any Tudor would have such bookcases, filled to the ceiling  with regular-bound books.

This comes from a large format book called ‘Mansions of England and Wales’, which was published by a man called Edward Twycross, who was, at different times, a very highly regarded silversmith (his assay mark was TWY+),  a solicitor and an author – having been educated at Trinity College Dublin. He was born in 1803 and died at the age of forty nine. His books – there were five volumes in all – are much studied by architectural historians and genealogists.  The volumes were released between 1846 and 1850, and were hugely expensive; they were bound in Morocco leather, with gilded lettering.

The style of the illustration gives this away as being a steel engraving from the early years of Queen Victoria’s reign, and it is an imagining; it was a contemporary study of The Library in the time of the first Viscount Combermere, but figures in Tudor dress have been dropped in, in an attempt to re-create the look of the room not long after the Cotton family acquired it after the Dissolution. He would not have known how the room had changed over the centuries, and obviously decided not to bother with such niceties.

The arms at the bottom of the page are those of Viscount Combermere (the coronet symbolises his position in the peerage), but are rather stylised.

The motto; “In Utraque Foruna Paratos” is latin, and means (roughly) “Prepared, Whatever My Fortune”. Fortune as in ‘fate’, not as in Lottery win. The three figures of eight above and below the chevron in the centre are twists of cotton, from the Cotton family arms. The two supporters are falcons.