The duke has uncovered a bookcase concealing a door through which the Prince Regent passed to visit his mistress, a 19th-century Russian leather sleigh, a dining table that would comfortably seat 60 and a red carpet 62ft (19 metres) in length. There are also enough architectural fittings to rebuild the lost interiors of Devonshire House in London, including the room in which one of his most famous ancestors, Georgiana, lay in state.
Collectors and the merely curious are expected to flock from all over the world to the public viewing in October, before the three-day sale being held by Sotheby's at Chatsworth. The total estimate for the 20,000 objects to be sold in 1,400 lots is £2.5m, but that's a very conservative guess. The estimates for individual lots range from £20 to £300,000.
When the present duke took over the house, after the death of his father six years ago, he found the attics so stuffed with the accumulated hoardings of five centuries of Devonshires that some of the doors could barely be forced open. The attics and other storerooms held not only the discarded or unfashionable contents of Chatsworth, but of a string of other palatial Devonshire homes: Lismore Castle in Ireland and Bolton Abbey in Yorkshire, along with Chiswick House and Hardwick Hall, both now museums; Burlington House, which now houses the Royal Academy, and their other vast London home. Devonshire House where Georgiana, their most famous duchess, reigned.
Devonshire House, designed by William Kent, was demolished almost a century ago in the 1920s and acres of interior fittings, including panelling, skirting boards, window frames, mirrors, doors and fireplaces were saved from the demolition and went into the Chatsworth attics.
The great saloon of Devonshire House was described by one awed visitor as "a veritable fairyland".
In 1806 queues of mourners filed past the body of Georgiana, famous for her wit, charm, political meddling and epic gambling, as she lay in state. The sale will include a spectacular white marble fireplace from her room, estimated at up to £300,000.
The sale will also have a witness to a spectacular royal scandal, the massive bookcase which later graced the nursery at Chatsworth before being relegated to the attics. Deborah Mitford, the Dowager Duchess and a historian of the family, recalled that it was peculiarly unsuitable for a nursery, concealing the door through which the future George IV passed to meet the Roman Catholic Maria Fitzherbert in the next room at Devonshire House. He later secretly married her, before putting her aside for a more politically suitable marriage. The bookcase is estimated at up to £80,000.
On a more modest level, there will also be crates of old crockery and cutlery, small mountains of trunks and suitcases and boxes of fragments of elaborate plasterwork.
The announcement of the Chatsworth sale comes a week after what was dubbed a "garage sale" of bits and bobs from Althorp, the childhood home of Diana, Princess of Wales, which raised more than £20m at Christie's. It may become the new craze for the British aristocracy to clear out their attics and cellers and have garage sales. What fun, I'd love to be there.
