C O N T E X T 1 2 3 : M A R C H 2 0 1 2 1 A watercolour vision of the Regency scheme for the Octagon Room at Attingham Park, painted by Peter Brears in 2007. See p15. Editorial Death by wallpaper www.ihbc.org.uk Registered as a charity in England andWales number 1061593 and in Scotland number SC041945. Company Limited by Guarantee. Registered in England number 3333780. Registered Office: 3 Stafford Road,TunbridgeWells, Kent TN2 4QZ. Officers President Trefor Thorpe email president@ihbc.org.uk Chair Jo Evans email chair@ihbc.org.uk Vice Chair Sheila Stones email vchair@ihbc.org.uk Secretary Eddie Booth email secretary@ihbc.org.uk Treasurer Richard Morrice email treasurer@ihbc.org.uk Membership Secretary Paul Butler email membership@ihbc.org.uk Education Secretary John Preston email education@ihbc.org.uk Publicity Secretary Doug Black email publicity@ihbc.org.uk Law & Practice Coordinator vacant email law@ihbc.org.uk Director Seán O’Reilly email director@ihbc.org.uk Projects Officer Fiona Newton email projects@ihbc.org.uk Consultant Consultations Coordinator James Caird email consultations@ihbc.org.uk Membership Services Officer Carmen Moran email membershipservices@ihbc.org.uk Administration Officer Lydia Porter email admin@ihbc.org.uk Committee Chairs Policy Mike Brown email policy@ihbc.org.uk Membership & Ethics Paul Butler email membership@ihbc.org.uk Finance & Resources Richard Morrice email resources@ihbc.org.uk Education John Preston email education@ihbc.org.uk Communications & Outreach Charles Strang email communications@ihbc.org.uk Branch Officers North Geoff UnderwoodTel 0191 433 3435 NorthWest Crispin Edwards Tel 0161 474 2620 Yorkshire Keith Knight Tel 01904 658482 West Midlands Charles Shapcott Tel 0121 7044312 East Midlands Roy Lewis Tel 01636 619335 South Julia Foster Tel 01296 585888 SouthWest JamesWebbTel 01202 732849 East Anglia Phil Godwin Tel 01263 516131 South East Sean Rix Tel 01483 523379 London David McDonald Tel 020 8881 6724 Scotland Stuart Eydmann Tel 01506 775279 Wales Nathan Blanchard Tel 01492 583443 Northern Ireland Colin Hatrick Tel 028 9064 1126 Republic of Ireland Cormac O’Sullivan Tel 00353 5677 62907 Business Office Jubilee House, High Street, Tisbury, Wiltshire SP3 6HA England Tel 01747 873133 Fax 01747 871718 email admin@ihbc.org.uk Briefing 2 Out of Context 4 The writer’s voice 5 Letters 5 Periodically 6 Supporting columns 9 From halls to dining rooms Eleanor John 12 The Octagon Room at Attingham Park Sarah Kay 15 Investigating the Theatre Royal, Bristol Peter Carey 19 Wallpapers in historic buildings Allyson McDermott 22 Protecting and managing the military heritage of Scotland David Fleetwood and Andrew Fulton 25 When in Rome Graham Tite 27 Conference report: IHBC London branch annual conference David McDonald 30 Conference report: Berlin, Germany Dennis Rodwell 32 Conference report: BEFS conference, Edinburgh Dennis Rodwell 33 Architecturally speaking 35 Notes from the chair 38 Director’s cut 40 Vox pop 42 Book reviews 43 Products and services 49 Advertisers index 52 ‘My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death,’ said Oscar Wilde in 1900 on his deathbed in the Hotel d’Alsace pension house. ‘One or the other of us has to go.’ This may be no more than a myth. In any case, the wallpaper is no longer there to offend anyone, having finally been replaced on the occasion of the centenary of Wilde’s death in 2000, when the hotel was upgraded to a much grander four stars. The death of Napoleon Bonaparte – in captivity on St Helena in 1821 – may have been even more directly caused by his wallpaper. His autopsy attributed it to stomach cancer, but later analysis of his hair found high levels of arsenic. This raised the possibility that Napoleon had been poisoned by his enemies. But an alternative has been suggested: that Napoleon’s death could have been caused, or at least hastened, by breathing in arsenic vapour produced by the wallpaper. This seemed to be confirmed when a supposed scrap of green wallpaper from Napoleon’s house on St Helena was found to contain copper arsenite, a constituent of the then-common colouring pigment Scheele’s green. If wallpaper containing Scheele’s green became damp (and Napoleon’s house on St Helena was notably damp), the glue was likely to become mouldy, converting the arsenic to a form of poisonous vapour, causing Gosio’s disease. So wallpaper can be a matter of life and death.We need no more justification for the focus of this issue of Context on a theme (for which Lisa Oestreicher has been the guest commissioning editor) of conserving historic interiors. Eleanor John (p12) reports on insights into the organisation of domestic space mid-17th-century London. Sarah Kay (p15) tells of the re-creation of the Octagon Room at Attingham Park after more than five years of investigation and analysis. Conserving historic interiors is so often a story of layers, with abundant information about the past to be found if anyone has the patience to peel, scrape and dismantle. Peter Carey (p19) explains how investigations beneath the layers at Britain’s earliest surviving theatre auditorium reveal aspects of history that had been assumed to have been lost. And Allyson McDermott (p22) writes about the role of wallpaper in both understanding and presenting our cultural heritage. As Oscar Wilde or Napoleon Bonaparte might have said: very nice if it doesn’t kill you.
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