When the book ‘Origines Britannicae’ was found in an upright piano
We occasionally gratefully receive donations of pre-1800 books, which move into air-conditioned comfort in our special collections room.
You often wonder about the journey that led them to our door and what interesting tales they could tell. Luckily for us, a recent acquisition was accompanied by its own remarkable story.
The book in question is Origines Britannicae, or, The antiquities of British churches, with a preface concerning some pretended antiquities relating to Britain in vindication of the Bishop of St Asaph / by Ed. Stillingfleet. London: Printed by M. Flesher for Henry Mortlock, at the Phoenix in St. Paul’s Church-yard, 1685.
And here is the tale, as shared by Colin Henderson of Christchurch Diocese:
“I found the volume in the back of a piano in the mid-1990s when I was attempting to repair the old upright located in the lounge of a Merivale [Christchurch] student flat where I was living with five others. The volume was damp and mouldy. The leather covers were rotten and disintegrating and had detached from the rest of the book (whose pages were held together by five loops of string). I dried the volume out in a hot water cupboard over several months.
In the late 1990s, I showed the book to a colleague whose policeman husband was into bookbinding as a hobby and who was interested in attempting a repair … [He] re-bound the volume and restored it to its present form.”
Thanks to the intervention, the book is now in good condition and will last for many more years.
