From the Cuerden Hall Townley-Parker Dinner Service. An important George III Serving Dish & Cover made in London in 1816 by Paul Storr.

This Dish would have been used for serving a joint of meat, birds or vegetables and is of a deep shaped oval form.  The sides rise to a border decorated with reed and trailing vine designs, interspersed with baskets of grapes and stylised fleur-de-lys motifs.  The high domed shaped cover rests on the dish and is decorated with lobing and rises to a gradrooned oval platform top surmounted by an acanthus leaf capped removable cast handle.  Each side is engraved with a contemporary Armorial surrounded by a drapery mantling cartouche and the Motto “ Sapere Aude – Dare to be wise” below.  The Dish and Cover also has an Old Sheffield plate warming base of belled form, with acanthus scroll feet and leaf capped reeded handles.  This would have been used to keep the silver dish warm in the kitchens and servery before it was brought to the dining table.  The warmer was made circa 1816 by Matthew Boulton, the finest plate worker of the period and his portrait is currently on the £ 50 note.  This piece is in excellent condition and makes a very grand statement on the table.  It is in excellent condition and is well marked on the silver dish, cover and finial and the underside of the base with the double sun mark, with faces, for Matthew Boulton.  The silver is also engraved with the pattern number 865.  This piece was part of a unique design silver dinner service, the decorative border almost certainly designed by Lewis Wyatt,  which was supplied to Robert Townley-Parker in 1816 on the occasion of his marriage to Harriet Brooke on 21^st December, 1816.

Height: 11 inches, 27.5 cm.

Total Length: 18.25 inches, 45.63 cm.

Width: 12 inches, 30 cm.

Weight of the silver: 102 oz.

ARMORIAL

The Arms are those of Parker quartering Townley and impaling Brooke for Robert Townley-Parker (1793-1879) of Cuerden Hall Preston, who married Harriet, daughter of Thomas Brooke of Church Minshall, Cheshire in 1816.

PROVENANCE

Supplied to Robert Townley-Parker (1793-1879) and Harriet Brooke of Cuerden Hall in 1816 on the occasion of their marriage and by descent to their eldest son.

Thomas Townley-Parker (d1906) and thence by descent to his nephew

Reginald Arthur Tatton and by descent to

Captain T.A. Tatton M.C.

Captain T.A. Tatton, removed from Cuerden Hall, Preston, and sold at Christie’s London 12, December 1928.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Robert Townley-Parker served as M.P. for Preston, Lancashire, 1837-1857, and was High Sheriff of the County in 1817.  In 1816, he married Harriet, youngest daughter of Thomas Brooke of Minshall Cheshire.  Upon his death in 1879, the illustrated London News described Townley-Parker as “One of the chief proprietors among the landed gentry in the county of Lancaster”.  He was succeeded by his eldest son, Thomas.  On his death in 1906 the manors, land and chattels passed to his nephew Mr Reginald Arthur Tatton of Chelford, in Cheshire.

Cuerden Hall, Lancashire, descended from the Cuerdens and Banasters to the Townley-Parker family, and was re-modelled by Robert Townley-Parker in 1816-19.  Together with its landscaped park, Cuerden Hall was a significant contribution to the nineteenth-century Picturesque movement (J.M. Robinson, A Guide to the Country Houses of the North West, 1991, PP. 176-177).

Other pieces from this extensive silver dinner service supplied to celebrate the marriage of Robert Townley-Parker and Harriet Brookes include a toasted cheese dish (M.A. Moss, the Lillian and Morrie Moss Collection of Paul Storr Silver, Miami, 1972, P.262, NO 196) and a Meat Dish (Partridge, Christie’s New York, 17^th May 2006, lot 143), each with the same distinctive border.