Photo: National Trust Images / Anthony Parkinson1/12The State Bedroom before the fire. The matching curtains and chairs were both made around 1710.
Photo: National Trust Images / James Dobson2/12The State Bedroom and State Bed after the fire—and finally reached. “I knew that [a] needlepoint was being carefully stored underneath the State Bed, but I was holding my breath because we did not know what we would find,” Sophie Chessum says of a rare 18th-century piece from the Queen Anne period. “As we dismantled the [bed],” she continues, “bit by bit we were able to first see the box, which we hoped still had the [piece] inside.”
Photo: National Trust Images / James Dobson3/12A closer look at the State Bed, which Chessum and others are hoping to eventually be able to reinstate. To get the bed out of the estate, volunteers first removed a modern bolster pillow to reveal a destroyed horsehair mattress. Below that layer, a modern bed sat atop the historic bed.
Photo: National Trust Images / James Dobson4/12Workers move the decorative headboard, which, like the rest of the frame, is 300 years old.
Photo: National Trust Images / James Dobson5/12The conservation process begins. Valances, braided passementerie, and other textile trimmings that were found had all been removed as step one of the move.
Photo: National Trust Images / James Dobson6/12A restorer works on a panel of yellow silk with red tassels. Luckily, the bed curtains themselves had been restored right before the fire, and were still packed in boxes that firefighters were able to swiftly remove from the blaze.
Photo: National Trust Images / James Dobson7/12Some of the surviving textiles from the bed, including the embroidery.
Photo: National Trust Images / James Dobson8/12The State Bedroom’s ravaged fireplace.
Photo: National Trust Images / James Dobson9/12The fireplace’s carvings, and unfurling bits of wallpaper.
Photo: National Trust Images / James Dobson10/12A Chinese porcelain rabbit made between 1720 and 1799 was found, almost completely undamaged, in the State Bedroom. It fell from the floor above.
Photo: National Trust Images / James Dobson11/12The surviving needlepoint, which was indeed beneath the bed. “On first appearances it was not promising,” Chessum notes. “[The needlework] was wet and had suffered some mold growth, but its colors were in a remarkable state of preservation.”
Photo: National Trust Images / James Dobson12/12A detail of the needlepoint, in which Father Time pulls two ladies in a carriage.
