A recent article in the Guardian about a beautiful piece of silk embroidery has a connection to two Corpus alumni. The extensive conservation of a 300-year-old bed cover from a Welsh estte revealed how "owners of country house estates in the UK found themselves short of cash and servants" in the first half of the twentieth century resulting in their homes and their contents fall into disrepair.

That was indeed the case for Simon and Philip Yorke (m.1924), squires of the Welsh estate Erdigg, now owned by the National Trust. As historian Peter Martland (m.1982) has written,

"Philip Scott Yorke came up to Corpus in 1924 with his elder brother Simon. The brothers were born at Erddig, near Wrexham, North Wales, into the fabulously wealthy Yorke family; they owned a huge estate that sat on the massive Wrexham coal fields, the mineral rights to which they owned. Philip and Simon were the last of the line of the Yorke family that had built Erddig and stuffed it with treasure."

Simon inherited Erdigg in 1922 at the age of 19, when the estate was already in serious decline. Simon became a soldier; although he was a lieutenant in the Denbighshire Yeomanry, he enlisted as a private in the North Staffordshire Regiment during the Second World War. He was a painter of still lifes, many of which remain in the house. He eventually became a recluse with no electricity or telephone, refusing to allow his farm tenants to install either in their homes. He refused to maintain the estate and would part with none of the artworks, sculptures, artifacts and general ephemera that the family had collected over the years. Simon died in 1966, and Erdigg passed to Philip.

Simon rowed for the Boat Club when at College, and after graduation went to Ridley Hall with the intention of entering the clergy. He left before finishing his studies there. Fond of the theatre, he acted with the Northampton Repertory Theatre and the Folkestone Repertory Theatre, and started the London and County Players to tour halls in south-east England. He spent the war in the Education Corps.

As described in the Dictionary of Welsh Biography, "Philip served as a lay reader in local churches though the diocese has no record of a licence to this effect. He also preached in local nonconformist chapels. He was often to be seen on his penny-farthing bicycle and he was a humorous lecturer with his ancient magic lantern. He used to spend his days at Erddig in the servants' hall, its enormous table full of tins of food for himself and his dog, pop bottles, papers and broken radio equipment. No meat or strong drink was ever to be seen, other than a bottle of Cyprus sherry for visitors. He bought his cars, his bicycles and his worn clothes second-hand. The Yorkes never threw anything away. When the cupboards in the house were cleared over 15,000 documents were presented to Clwyd Record Office."

Final decline

Peter Martland says of the fate of Erdigg, "The combination of death duties and the nationalisation of mineral rights in 1938, just before the outbreak of the Second World War, caused the cash to dry up and the post war scramble for coal undermined the property (literally, as coal was mined underneath the house and serious subsistance took place). By the 1960s the house was a wreck. Neither brother married and there were no other direct heirs, so a few years after inheriting Erddig Philip gave the house, its contents and the estate to the National Trust. 

They found an amazing time capsule of life from a bygone age (in fact several bygone ages). Philip died in 1978 and never saw the completion of Erddig restoration or the revelation of many of its long-forgotten treasures, which are  now seen by the thousands of visitors who flock to Erddig. Philip is the subject of an entry in the appeared in a 1973 BBC programme about him and Erddig entitled Look, stranger – the last squire of Erddig.

Amongst the many damaged and decayed treasures in the house was the silk coverlet that called for many hours of painstaking conservation work. The piece had been commissioned in 1720 by Erdigg's then-owner, John Mellor, for a room that was known as the state bedroom. There is a record of Simon and Philip's mother, Louisa, repairing the piece in 1919. Now it has been fully restored and is now on display at Erdigg. 

Photos: National Trust