The Rotherwas Room is an English Jacobean room currently in the Mead Art Museum, in Amherst College. It was originally installed in the estate of the Bodenham family called Rotherwas Court, in Herefordshire, England, as part of the country house where the family lived. It was commissioned by Sir Roger Bodenham sometime after 1600, and completed in 1611. Some of the room's most prominent aspects include a carved oak mantelpiece and walnut wall panelling. The room originally functioned as a parlor, where families would dine privately or entertain guests informally. In 1944, Herbert L. Pratt bequeathed the room to the college. It had been previously installed in his Neo-Jacobean House "The Braes," in Glen Cove, Long Island. Although the wall panelling and the mantelpiece of the original room remain, no specific records of the furniture or the ceiling design of this room in the original Rotherwas Court house have been found.
History
Family
The name "Rotherwas" first appeared in the Domesday Book commissioned by William the Conqueror in 1086. The entry notes: "Land of Gilbert Son of Thorold. In Dinedor Hundred. Gilbert son of Thurold holds Rotherwas." The land sits near the River Wye in Herefordshire and belonged to the de la Barre family. In the early fifteenth century, John Bodenham of Dewchurch married Isabella de la Barre, heiress of Walter de la Barre. This marriage created an alliance between the two families. Therefore, following the death of Sir Charles de la Barre in 1483, Roger Bodenham, the grandson of John Bodenham, inherited the property. The Bodenham and de la Barre family line continued until 1884, when the last direct descendant, Charles de la Barre Bodenham, died. Even though the Bodenham family members were not the initial lords of the Rotherwas estate, they did control other areas around the River Wye. During the reign of Edward I, Sir John de Bodenham was one of the lords of Monington Stradley in Herefordshire. In the early seventeenth century, Sir Roger Bodenham, the Bodenham presiding at that time over the Rotherwas estate, commissioned the creation of the Rotherwas Room. The date inscribed on the mantelpiece, 1611, indicates the date of completion. Blount stated in his MSS Collections for Herefordshire, "the house is partly of old tymber work, but an end of it was new built in the last age by Sir Roger." Blount wrote the Herefordshire Manuscripts in 1678 and "last age" indicated approximately three score years and ten earlier. This fact confirms the 1611 date on the fireplace. Additionally, comparisons made to other rooms in houses such as Lyme Halle in Cheshire and Broughton Castle in Oxfordshire, corroborate the inscription and place the room in the early seventeenth century. The coat of arms on the mantelpiece points to Sir Roger's incentive for commissioning the room. At his coronation on July fifteenth, 1603, James I knighted Sir Roger Bodenham. The coat of arms seems to be "a visual proclamation of Sir Roger's distinguished heritage." James I made many visits to Rotherwas and once reportedly said, "Everyone may not live at Rotherwas."
James I knighted many nobles during his reign. This knighting spree may have been James' way of appeasing his Catholic mother, Mary Queen of Scots. Knighting Catholic Bodenham may have been an example of this appeasement. Christopher Durston argues that James I was clearly a "credal Calvinist," but he respected Catholics more than most Calvinists. Charles Williams stated, "He (James) was anxious to extend toleration to the Catholics- so long as they were not intolerable." In one letter to Robert Cecil he wrote, "I reverence their church as our Mother Church, although clogged with many infirmities and corruptions." The Bodenhams were Royalists and suffered considerably during the Commonwealth. There was no work done on the building from 1620 to 1685.
New house In 1731, Charles Bodenham commissioned architect James Gibbs to build the a new wing of the Rotherwas estate. In the first half of the nineteenth century, Burke wrote: "Since rebuilt, about a century ago; the house is now a large mansion of red brick. Some of the ornaments of the old residence have been removed to the present one and the chimney piece with twenty-five quarterings over it, now stands in the hall." The initials "CB" on the mantelpiece denote Charles Bodenham. Although he did not create the initial room, he did move elements from the original room to the new house. However, not all parts of the room made it into the new wing: "Elements of the paneling and chimneypiece that didn't fit into the eighteenth century enfilade were moved onto ceiling beams or stored in cupboards. At the same time, the room's original ceiling was replaced with oak beams."
Braes After the death of Count Lubienski Bodenham in 1912, the family line ended. The Rotherwas estate was dismantled in 1913 and thirteen of the mansion's wood panelled rooms were sent to America. C.J. Charles brought them over the pond to his New York gallery, Charles Gallery, at 718 5th Avenue. C.J. Charles, also known as Charles Duveen or "Charles of London", was the brother of Joseph Duveen, the famous art dealer. Herbert Lee Pratt bought the room for approximately $350,000 in February 1913 with plans to install it in his new home. Herbert Pratt chose architect James Brite to build him a Neo-Jacobean house, called "The Braes" in Glen Cove, Long Island. It was a Jacobean H plan brick house adorned with Tudor and Flemish Renaissance-derived limestone ornamentation on the exterior. Many city dwellers commissioned houses in the English Jacobean or Georgian style homes like country houses of the English style to give them more credibility and status. Brite added a Jacobean style ceiling that replaced the oak beams installed in 1731 and probably looked more like the original room ceiling. The Illustrated London News wrote a story with a headline lamenting the loss of the room, "Lost to England: Superb Rotherwas Panelling for America". However, the papers in the US fawned over the room. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle ran a story in the Sunday paper that read: "Famous Art Treasures for Pratt Country Home."
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