Musgrave family brass seal: Musgrave de Edenhall is perhaps the elaborately engraved walnut and brass stay busk dating from the 18th C. bearing the name ‘Mary Musgrav’, probably a family member. Another vernacular piece is a decoratively engraved horn spoon. On loan and on display at the parish church at Kirkby Stephen is a boar’s tusk said to be from the last wild boar in England, that killed on Wild Boar Fell by Sir Richard Musgrave d. 1464. It was found in his tomb in the Hartley Chapel during restorations in the church in the mid-19th century and is listed among their gifts to the Museum widely reported in the press in 1922.
Other items associated with Eden Hall and the Musgrave family gifted more recently is a miniature portrait of Lady Adora (‘Zoe’) Musgrave, mother of Sir Richard, the Museum’s benefactor; after the death of her husband Sir Richard Courtenay Musgrave she married Henry, 3rd Lord Brougham and Vaux, and left Eden Hall to live at Brougham Hall. Ironically both Eden Hall and Brougham Hall would be demolished in the same year, 1934; also a brass seal matrix with the lettering ‘Musgrave de Edenhall’ showing the family heraldic bearings featuring six annulets, and a silver statuette of a knight on a pedestal holding a lance – possibly intended as an elegant toothpick and holder. Other memorabilia include heraldic hand painted place mats, a watercolour of Eden Hall, and photographs and ephemera relating to the Edenhall estate. There are documents relating to Sir Christopher Musgrave dated 1728 in the Museum’s archives, predominantly bills and receipts for goods and works done at Eden Hall.
29
