Gotch, J. Alfred
Holiday journeys in Northamptonshire. I. Round Dryden’s birthplace. II. A stroll by the Welland. III. Round Stamford (bound with a number of other pamphlets relating to Rushton Hall, the Tresham family and Northamptonshire generally).
Northampton, The Dryden Press, Taylor & Son 1889.
Full Description
8vo. (4) + 34pp, folding litho frontispiece, 5 litho plates. Bound up with various other pamphlets in one contemporary quarter morocco volume, successively belonging to G.E. Cokayne (ink ownership inscription) and to Lord Cullen of Ashbourne (rubberstamped ownership inscription). The pamphlets include the following : Sweeting, Rev. W.D., Architectural description of the Triangular Lodge at Rushton (etc), Northampton, J. Taylor & Son 1868, 11 + (1)pp, engraved frontispiece, 1 litho plate, 1 added printed leaf ; (Grey, William, and others?), Brington : the home of the Washingtons and Spencers, and notes on Sulgrave, Washingtoniana, Northampton, The Dryden Press, Taylor & Son 1901, (2) + 16 + 27 + (1)pp, 3 plates, text ills ; and a set of the separately paginated articles from the periodical Northamptonshire Notes and Queries subsequently combined to form the publication Rushton and its owners, issued by the Taylor firm in 1896, with the 1896 title leaf and preliminary leaf added. An autograph letter, signed, and dated 4 February 1913, relating to the recent transfer of the lease of Rushton Hall from its wealthy American tenant, Mr Van Alen, to a new tenant, Mr.Breitmeyer, “an Austrian diamond merchant”, is loosely inserted.
One of the rarer published works by the architect and architectural historian J.Alfred Gotch. It is bound up here with numerous other pamphlets which have in common that they were printed and published by J. Taylor and Son, a firm in Northampton who specialised in publications on local history, and issued the scholarly periodical Northamptonshire Notes and Queries (the firm’s advertisements for its local history publications are bound in at the end of the volume). Apart from those that relate to Rushton Hall and the Tresham family , the most interesting for a wider audience is that discussing the two Northamptonshire villages, Brington and Sulgrave, associated with the forebears of the USA’s first President, George Washington, which also offers well-informed discussions of Washington’s genealogy and of the relationship between Washington’s coat of arms and the Stars and Stripes.