Really lovely and useable. There is a label on the reverse of the bedcover: Made for Rosemary Kennedy Aspin, in the year 1930 by Nancy Gosling, Edith Freeman and Mary Swan, In Westerham, Kent.
Rosemary Kennedy Aspin (1917 - 2009) was one of eight Scottish ladies who worked at Bletchley Park once the top-secret establishment of the World War Two codebreakers. In the Bletchley Park records it states:
Wavendon House, 1942 - 1943; Stanmore 1943 - 1945. Bombe operator, in charge of a bay at Stanmore. She is commemorated on the CodeBreakers wall.*
Why the coverlet and sham were embroidered for her is a mystery. In 1930 Rosemary would have been 21. We shall never know why this lovely piece was embroidered for her. Was she due to marry and something happened......
After the war she must have trained as a physiotherapist and for 21 years she worked at the Royal Northern Infirmary, Inverness. From 1924 - 2009 Rosemary lived at Broomhill House, Dulnain Bridge, Grantown-on- Spey, Scotland, a house her parents bought for her. Dulnain Bridge is 45 miles; 72 kilometres from Inverness.
Broomhill House is an imposing Arts and Crafts house, constructed of solid granite with ashlar dressings under a series of large stone slabbed roofs. The house was commissioned by the architects Balfour, Paul & Partners and constructed for Sir Alfred Booth of Liverpool, best known for his role as Chairman of the Cunard Line, and completed in 1918.
In 1924, the Aspin family purchased this residence exclusively for their 6-year-old daughter Rosemary, who was suffering from pneumonia, while the rest of the family continued to live in their lavish town house in Glasgow. Perhaps they felt the fresh air would be more beneficial to her health than Glasgow. In 1935 her parents moved to the house. They commissioned the highly acclaimed architect Sir Basil Spence to extend the house, incorporating an awe-inspiring barrel-vaulted music room. The pristine air quality worked wonders and Rosemary spent 85 years calling this fine property home.
The bedcover and pillow sham would have looked just right in the Arts & Crafts house. The linen is of an excellent heavy quality and the workmanship, presumably by gifted amateur ladies, is excellent. The colours are well chosen, bright and attractive, as is the subject matter. I love the blue embroidered background.
Coverlet: The heavy natural linen ground embroidered in worsted wools, the central band with three birds on flowering trees, above and below with similar flower motifs using a great variety of flowers, designs and stitches, twenty five motifs in all, embroidered in colourful wools, the background stitched in blue silk with an entwined scrolling design, a drawnwork edging worked in indigo and ivory , the border of double thickness linen, the corners mitred.
7ft x 5ft 3 in; 2.12 x 1.6 m
Coverlet: Top row: There is a very small hole on the top centre motif. The second motif from the right has a minute red colour run.
Row 2 - First two motifs again have the slightest red colour run.
Row 3 - Central row: Three small holes to the central peacock's head area. The right hand motif has a very small light brown stain 1 cm diameter near the peacock's tail.
Row 4 & 5 - Fine
Row 6 - Under the central bird there is a little darned area, approximately 2 in; 5 cm square.It hardly notices.
A little the background blue silk lines have worn, here and there, but nothing noticeable.
Ask for photos.
* www.bletchleypark.org.uk/our-story/stanmore-outstation/
Price: on request
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