Fascinating Flagons
20th September 2023Five stoneware flagons with fascinating stories behind them have sold at auction in Salisbury for £16,500.
The bottles ranged in date from 1723 to around 1850, with the largest standing at 18 inches high.
The earliest flagon was inscribed ‘Hen Hosey 1723’ (lot 104) and related to the Angel Inn at Colnbrook in Buckinghamshire. The pub is recorded in the Hosey family as early as the mid 17th century, with a Samuel Hosey logged as proprietor in 1714, and Henry Hosey appearing in archives in 1733. The 18 inch high pear-shaped bottle would have sat on the bar of the Angel Inn and dispensed ale or cider to visiting customers. It attracted fierce bidding both in the room and on the telephone, eventually selling to a determined American buyer for £8,820.
Two stoneware bottles of a similar size were made in the mid 18th century for an enterprising landlord from Godstone in Surrey. Mr Bonwick suffered terribly from gout and sank a new well on his land so he had less far to walk for water. Soon cured of his gout, Bonwick attributed his new-found health to the water in the well, which he began to use to brew his beer and also to sell to fellow sufferers. Peartree Water became highly fashionable in London and Sir Horace Walpole was, for a time, a fan. One bottle lacked its handle and sold for £1,638 (lot 103); but the other in better condition fetched £4,410 (lot 102).
A rather more tragic story was attached to a large serving bottle made about a hundred years after Mr Bonwick’s gout cure. This sizeable flagon was made for George Dady, landlord of The Walnut Tree Shades in Norwich during the 1850s (lot 101). Mr Dady’s tenure as landlord was shortlived and he died in a suspected suicide in 1859 at the age of just 27, being found drowned in a cistern after experiencing financial troubles. His grieving widow took over the running of the pub but died in a freak gunpowder explosion the following year. Miraculously, their two children were rescued from the blaze by a passing sailor and were cared for by their grandparents before being transferred to a London orphanage in 1865. The bottle, sold alongside an earlier plain stoneware flagon, sold at auction for £1,638.
All of the flagons formed part of the collection of the late Jonathan Horne, the famed dealer in English pottery who passed away in 2010. Also in the collection was a 14th century pottery jug which had been excavated in Red Cross Street in London – the site where the Barbican now stands. Included with two other medieval pottery jugs, it sold for £10,080 (lot 98).
“There’s a fabulous combination here of early, good quality English stoneware items and fascinating historical stories and insight,” said pottery specialist, Clare Durham. “The additional provenance to one of the UK’s most prestigious former dealers added appeal to collectors on both sides of the Atlantic.”