An autobiographical manuscript by a Georgian pharmacist in Dorset will return to the county after the local museum purchased it at auction. Dr Giles Roberts (1766-1834) was a pharmacist in Bridport, ...

A picture by Claude Lorrain (1600-82) has been blocked from export in the hope a UK institution can raise the £9m needed to keep it in the country. The owners of the grand estate Woburn Abbey in ...

Silver spoons for the dining table have been around since antiquity - a much longer history than the table fork, which did not come into general use until the 18 th century. By this time spoons had ...

They did this to avoid the perils of travel and (after 1784) to escape paying duty in a region where a heathy distain for the Hanoverians persisted well into the 19 th century. Currently some 30 ...

The form emerged in the early 18 th century, though the origin of the name is obscure. Chairs of this type were manufactured in large numbers in the Thames Valley in Buckinghamshire, and Windsor may ...