Following extensive conservation and subsequent display in the Victoria and Albert Museum’s Raphael Gallery, in February this year, the Montagu State Bed has returned to Boughton House on long term loan.

Mark Jones, Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum said:

"It is wonderful that the original setting for the bed survives, including the tapestries, and I look forward to seeing the bed at Boughton House once again this summer."

The return to Boughton of the 17th century State Bed, on long term loan from the Victoria and Albert Museum, is significant for a number of reasons. Firstly, it is an imaginative step for the Museum to send back to its historic setting a major object; and moreover to carry out a long programme of conservation on it, involving over 6000 hours of work to make it safe to travel and to show out of museum conditions.

This kind of patience and skill can be seen in the newly restored finials which are formed of the original feathers. The skirt is of ostrich feathers wired so that they curve and then lashed on to a straw-covered stalk and dyed or tinted silver-grey; above them is a band of small black ostrich feathers from which sprouts a spire of white egret feathers.

Ever since August 1916, when the 8th Duke of Buccleuch gave the bed then in a parlous condition, to the Victoria and Albert Museum, the state rooms have lacked the climax provided by such a bed; Its return in 2003, however, has also led to other modifications in the furnishing of the state rooms in order to give visitors a stronger sense of the original late-l7th-century sense of progression through colour and materials. This cannot be experienced anywhere else in England, but it is set out in the late 17th and early 18th century inventories for the house.

The underlying processional route is as follows: The formal entrance in the middle of the arcade leads into the Great Hall; then follows the west-facing Painted Hall where the route to the state rooms turns north to the Painted Staircase to the first floor. From its landing open the four state rooms that had dropped out of use so long ago that they have been merely numbered for over 200 years.

Ralph Montagu began the north range with the date 1689 has been discovered on the ceiling of the state bedroom; the panelling in the range was fitted between 1691 and 1694 but surprisingly that involved no carving of mouldings but painting in tromp l’oeil instead. That suggests shortage of time or money or possibly a combination of the two: certainly Ralph Montagu was anxious to be able to receive King William III at Boughton and all was sufficiently ready for the King to come in 1695.

As was usual the first room was the both the largest and the simplest in its furnishing, with panelled walls and no hangings or tapestry as befitted a room that was sometimes regarded as a Great Dining Room. To our eyes some aspects of its furnishing seem to have been surprisingly simple: it seems to have contained a set of black ladder back chairs with cane seats with gilt feet and finials. Only five of these survive and four are now shown flanking the fireplace as a reminder. Originally they had cushions of crimson damask with valances. They bring to mind a letter from Anne Duchess of Buccleuch, a contemporary of Ralph Montagu, asking for inexpensive Dutch chairs with cane seats as was usual in a dining room for Dalkeith, her principal house in Scotland.

The Second State Room was the drawing room which was hung with part of a set of Mortlake tapestries of The Acts of the Apostles, a favourite choice for a Great Apartment. It was furnished with a set of upholstered chairs with removable covers of crimson velvet, which would have been only put on special occasions. That idea is given by the chairs now in the room, most of which have been the Apartment for as long as anyone can remember, but they now consist of three different patterns, the best being the pair of chairs flanking the fireplace; and they have now fixed upholstery of old crimson velvet. Since crimson was regarded as the grandest colour, there was a special element of display in having a sequence of three rooms in it, but it was usual for the material to be graded in expense to create a sense of build up. Thus damask preceded velvet, as here, but also it seems to have been thought that a pile of velvet went better with tapestry than the smooth silk of damask.

The climax to the apartment lies once more in the Third State Room – the bedroom, which again is hung with Acts of the Apost1es tapestries. The bed rather surprisingly seems to be about 20 years older than the room and have been made by French upholsterers. Certainly its form is sober compared with that of the Melville bed in the Victoria and Albert Museum, which was probably made in the late 1690s. On the other hand it is made of an unusually rich material that is a crimson silk damask brocaded in gold. It is the complexity of the weaving that has been such a challenge to the conservators and has added so much to the work involved in preparing it for open display. Over the centuries the subtlety off the pattern has become hard to read, but it is observed that the brocading brilliantly exploits the figure of the damask; while the inside of the tester shows the skill of the upholsterer in the cutting of the material to make the design.

Research has not revealed how Ralph Montagu acquired the bed or its history before it appears for the first time in the 1697 inventory, but it conceivable that it was a royal object that be was granted from the Great Wardrobe, the department responsible for furnishing the royal houses and of which he was in charge. It is suggested by the recent discovery of how the Earl of Middlesex, then Lord Chamberlain and so Montagu’s Superior, acquired the King’s Bed now at Knole about 1695.

The chairs were originally covered in the same material as the bed, but all trace of that has gone, and the chairs in the room and along the apartment are covered in old crimson damask. Originally there would have been a throne-like armchair with them comparable with the chair in blue brocade (also conserved by the Victoria and Albert Museum and lent back to the house) now in the Fifth State Room and the chair with feather pattern needlework in the Low Pavilion Ante Room.

As was usual there was there was a change of note in the dressing room and here it was expressed in a change to blue damask upholstery. However the rearrangement had involved removing red chairs and bringing the set with point d’ hongrie covers. These have no red in them, which is suitable for the character of the room and also suits the tone of the tapestries.

The Boughton House Stateroom are open as part of the general Boughton House opening daily from August 1st to September 1st from 2.00pm, last entry at 4.00pm and at other times by appointment.

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