CROMORE HOUSE VALUATION. Inventory & Valuation of Furniture, Linen, Silver, Sheffield Plate, Plated Items, Ornamental Items, Books, Decorative China, Pictures, Jewellery, Sporting and Household Equipment at Cromore, Portstewart, Co. Londonderry.

The property of R.A.C. Montagu Esq., J.P. Taken for the purposes of Insurance. London: Waring & Gillow Ltd., October 1913 - January 1914. Folio. pp. 81. Typed on one side only. Bound in contemporary full straight-grained green morocco, title lettered in gilt on upper cover. All edges gilt. Gillows Valuers oval stamp to each leaves. In fine condition.

This finely preserved valuation manuscript, prepared by the celebrated London furnishing house Waring & Gillow Ltd., documents in great detail the contents of Cromore, the Montagu family seat at Portstewart, Co. Londonderry. Dated October 1913 and concluded in January 1914, the inventory was compiled for insurance purposes and provides a fascinating window into the domestic and cultural life of an Anglo-Irish gentry household on the eve of the First World War.
The total valuation amounted to £4,429.8s.0d., a considerable sum at the time, equivalent to over £500,000 in today’s money. The breakdown: books were insured at £66.8s.0d., pictures at £531.11s.0d., silver and Sheffield plate at £955.14s.0d., with household furniture and contents comprising nearly half the total valuation at £1,950.16s. The detailed index records every room of the Cromore estate, from bedrooms and the dining hall to servants’ quarters, pantry, and scullery, reflecting the hierarchical and highly ordered world of the Edwardian country house.
The document bears the stamp and signature of William J. Court of Gillows, then one of the most prestigious firms of cabinetmakers and furnishing experts in Britain. Gillows, whose origins stretched back to the eighteenth century in Lancaster, had by this time merged with Waring’s of Liverpool, becoming Waring & Gillow Ltd. The firm was patronised by aristocracy and gentry alike, furnishing both stately homes and luxury liners.
Richard Archibald Chichester Montagu (1861-1920), Justice of the Peace, was a member of a prominent Londonderry family with ties to the landed gentry. Invaluable social documents, illuminating the material culture, taste, and wealth of the Anglo-Irish class in Ulster before the upheavals of political change and war. Survivals of this kind, intact and in their original binding, are exceedingly rare.

[Cat 162]