56 
Aw Inventory of Furniture at Beauchtef 
Hall, (1691), 
By S. O. Appy, M.A. 
in a bold engrossing hand on a roll of parchment 
etd} about thirty feet long, will serve to show how a 
ae squire’s residence was furnished at the end of the 
seventeenth century. At the present day, when the style of 
furniture known as “Queen Anne” has become fashionable, 
a detailed list of all the household goods of a large country 
residence, and the quantity of furniture in each room, may 
prove of service. We are apt, now-a-days, to crowd our rooms 
with too great a profusion of all kinds of furniture. A 
perusal of this inventory will show that the various apartments 
of the house were by no means overcrowded. We may suppose 
that the furniture at Beauchief was of a simple, and tastefully 
decorated kind. In an account of Beauchief Hall, Brailsford, 
a Derbyshire antiquary, who lived at the beginning of the last 
century, says :— : 
“On the ground floor of the house are seventeen rooms. 
On the next floor, with the hall, parlour, and dining-room, are 
seven rooms; and in the dining-room is a pretty wrought 
chimney piece of alabaster; and between the pillars, on each 
side, supporting a canopy, is the effigies of an ancient man 
with a long beard, with a furred gown of half-sleeves, and 
upon a mantle thrown over his shoulders a collar of S. S. and 
