Things to see in the House at Croome

Contemporary exhibitions and installations

With about four-fifths of its collection absent, the House at Croome isn’t necessarily what you would expect from a traditional National Trust property. Instead, rooms, many with beautiful 18th-century plasterwork and fireplaces, are used to present temporary exhibitions and installations continuing the 6th Earl’s legacy of nurturing new talent.

Robert Adam bookcases display

A monumental set of mahogany mid-18th-century bookcases, designed by renowned architect, Robert Adam (1728-1792) for Croome Court have returned from the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A), London.

The bookcases were in the Library for which they were designed for over 200 years before leaving Croome in 1973. These bookcases were not just pieces of furniture designed to hold books but were designed, made, and fitted by craftsmen responsible for three of the finest of Croome’s Neoclassical rooms designed by Robert Adam (1728-92).

These highly significant pieces were one of the last of the house’s original interiors to survive into the late 20th century intact. Uncertainty over the mansion’s future in the mid-20th-century, led to the selling of much of the collection in a series of auctions in the 1940s.

In 1752, the 6th Earl was said to be ‘furnishing his house with elegance’ employing four of the most pre-eminent people or firms operating in mid-18th-century Britain: Robert Adam; William Vile (d. 1767) & John Cobb (1715-78) and Sefferin Alken (fl. 1744-83). John Hobcraft (fl. 1757-84) installed the bookcases into the space.

Aside from their association with one of Adam’s most celebrated early Neoclassical interiors, the bookcases stand-alone as superb examples of mid-18th-century English furniture. This is why the Victoria & Albert Museum was keen to acquire them, purchasing them in 1975 with the aid of a generous anonymous donation.

To allow Croome to re-install the bookcases funds will need to be raised to allow this momentous work to be carried out.