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Summary
Author: (Bacon, R.N.)
Title: Narrative of proceedings regarding the erection of the Leicester monument, with a statement of account and list of subscribers.
Publication: Norwich, Bacon & Co nd (but preface dated 12 Dec 1850).
Price: Sold
Reference: 11338
Full Description
8vo. 7 + (3) + xcvi + 30pp, with woodcut portrait of Lord Leicester and woodcut view of the Leicester Monument. Publisher’s cloth, bumped at head of spine and a little worn and stained. From the library of the Le Strange family of Hunstanton Hall, Norfolk, with circular Hunstanton Hall library stamp on title leaf. Two subsequent ink ownership inscriptions on front free endpaper. Recently Sir Howard Colvin’s copy.
A scarce and in its own way fascinating volume, describing in blow-by-blow detail the process involved in deciding the site for a monument to the great Norfolk agriculturalist Thomas William Coke, 1st Earl of Leicester, and in deciding what form the monument should take. After much initial controversy the architect William John Donthorn, London-based but Norfolk born, was commissioned to design a memorial column for a site on Lord Leicester’s estate at Holkham, but there were still to be disputes between architect and builder (the monument’s building committee generally siding with the builder against Donthorn), and it took eight years for the memorial column to be completed. The author of the present book also prints remarks made by him at one of the building committee’s final meetings, stating that the chosen design for the column, was essentially his own, plagiarised by Donthorn without acknowledgement.