‘Lady Spencer’s Bedroom Redux’
Inspired by the celebrated suite of bedroom furniture designed by James ‘Athenian’ Stuart
for Margaret, Countess Spencer’s apartment on the principal floor at Spencer House.
The suite, executed in both sabicu and mahogany, comprised a wardrobe, a chest, a pair of
bedside tables, a small table or washstand and a writing-table. The beds belonging to the
suite were burnt in the fire at the Spencer family’s Wimbledon residence in 1785.
Arthur Young, visiting Spencer House in 1772, described the room as having ‘beds and tables
very finely carved and inlaid’ and the suite must have been in Spencer House by 1766, when
the family started to occupy the whole house and not merely the Ground Floor.
The bedroom may not have served as Lady Spencer’s primary sleeping quarters and it
is postulated that the room may have served as an sumptuous and intimate setting for the
reception of close friends. The rest of the suite remains at Althorp, save for the ‘washstand’
which is now in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
22