Grimsthorpe Castle announced as winner of the 2024 Historic Houses Collections Award, sponsored by Dreweatts.

Grimsthorpe Castle announced as the winner of the 2024 Historic Houses Collections Award, sponsored by Dreweatts.

The annual award was introduced in 2022 to honour the creators, owners, curators, researchers, and conservators who preserve, augment, restore, and interpret the beautiful and significant objects on show inside historic houses up and down the country, enabling the public to understand and enjoy them and the stories that they tell.

Grimsthorpe Castle, owned by the Willoughby family for over 500 years, is a mansion of differing architectural styles in Lincolnshire. The family’s close connection to the monarchy means that the castle is now home to a fine collection of special items made for England’s Kings and Queens past and present.

Recent work on the collection highlights the importance of ensuring that correct environments for display enable the team to tell new stories. It has centred around conserving and exhibiting a silk doublet and trunkhose dating from 1600 to 1605. These probably belonged to Robert Bertie, 13th Lord Willoughby de Eresby (later 1st Marquess of Lindsey) and may have been worn by him to the coronation of James I in 1603.

The provenance and extraordinary survival of this costume make it a rare and important historical text. The ensemble was previously displayed at the V&A in the 1990s and was included in Janet Arnold’s seminal work Patterns of Fashion.

However, when it is considered in the context of Grimsthorpe and the status of the Willoughby family in the late Tudor and early Jacobean period, it assumes additional historical resonance. With reference to other items in the Grimsthorpe collection (paintings, books, archival letters), this very personal item becomes a central tool in successfully interpreting the character and preoccupations of Robert Bertie, and informs the understanding of him as one of the most influential military leaders of his time.

The team at Grimsthorpe have been able to reimagine elements of their collection in terms of martial inheritance and authority.  The doublet was rediscovered in 2019 in poor condition and partially conserved, the treatment having been started and abandoned in the early 2000s. It required extensive but sympathetic conservation before they could consider exhibiting it alongside the trunkhose.

Emma Miller, collections curator at Grimsthorpe, said: “We are delighted and honoured to receive this prestigious award. It endorses our commitment to bring the significance of the historic collection at Grimsthorpe to a wider public audience.”

Ben Cowell, Director General at Historic Houses, said; “The remarkable restoration of the early 17^th century doublet and trunkhose at Grimsthorpe demonstrates the historic significance of the items in care by our member houses. The conservation of the pieces, and their display in new cabinets, shows what can be done when houses think imaginatively about caring for and displaying objects from their collection”

Will Richards, Deputy Chairman at Dreweatts, said: “Dreweatts are proud, once again, to be supporting Historic Houses and to be playing a part in recognising the importance of historic collections in our collective history and the dedication that it requires to securing them for future generations. The judges were hugely impressed with this year’s winner, Grimsthorpe, in particular, the discovery, careful restoration, and display of an important element of the collection – as well as the sheer variety, inherent interest, and beauty of the wider collection”