Furnishing the Past | Morel & Hughes and a historic Gothic Interior at Raby Castle

Furnishing the Past | Morel & Hughes and a historic Gothic Interior at Raby Castle

What did the Octagon Drawing Room at Raby Castle look like prior to its development in the mid-1800s? This was the question at the heart of a recent research project undertaken through Raby Castle’s partnership with the Furniture History Society (FHS), helping to mark the 10th anniversary of British and Irish Furniture Makers Online (BIFMO). Funded by the Iris Foundation, two students worked together to investigate the changing history of Raby Castle’s Octagon Drawing Room and to explore evidence of an earlier Gothic-style room that occupied the same space in the early nineteenth century.

Research questions

The project initially focused on pieces of furniture attributed to the renowned cabinet-making firm Morel & Hughes, and considered whether they were originally purchased for a historic Gothic Drawing Room at Raby Castle. Emerging archival clues suggested that the furniture may be connected:

A newspaper report from 1815 described the renovation of a Gothic drawing room at Raby Castle, indicating that significant work was taking place at the time.

A bill preserved within the NatWest archives from the same year of a significant payment to Morel & Hughes raised the question of whether the furniture was commissioned for the project.

A Royal Academy catalogue from 1820 references a drawing by R. Hughes, Architect, of a Gothic Drawing Room at Raby Castle. However, no copy of this drawing has yet been identified.

Together, these sources offered a fascinating starting point, while also opening up wider questions about taste, status, design and investment during the Gothic Revival period.

Betsey and Linhui

Introducing Betsey and Linhui

To undertake this research, two students with shared interests in historic interiors, material culture and public engagement were paired together.

Betsey Donham is in her second year at the Bard Graduate Centre in New York City, where she studies historic houses and interiors through the lens of material culture, with particular interests in gender and social history.

Reflecting on the project, Betsey said:

‘I really enjoyed the social history aspect of this project. Being able to see the material culture that has survived at Raby, be it the furniture, tea pots, or written accounts of ghost stories, allowed us to create a full vision of the castle’s use over time according to the people who used the space. It has informed how I incorporate material culture, collections, and social history into my study of interior spaces and broader historic homes and estates.’

Linhui is a postgraduate student in Art Management and Heritage Studies at the University of Leeds. Her research interests include furniture history, material culture, exhibition interpretation and digital approaches to historical research.

‘Working on this project has shown me how the history of a room can be reconstructed through fragments rather than through a single complete record. I particularly enjoyed collaborating with Betsey and the teams at Raby Castle, the Furniture History Society and BIFMO to compare archival evidence with surviving objects, while making areas of uncertainty visible. Developing the website also allowed me to explore how digital design can make historical inventories and research questions more accessible to a wider audience. The international collaboration was especially rewarding, and I valued seeing how different perspectives and areas of expertise could be brought together in one exhibition.’

Bringing the evidence together

Using the project’s questions as a starting point, Betsey and Linhui developed an engaging interactive timeline that traces the evolution of the room across different periods.

Drawing together furniture, archival plans, inventories, historic descriptions and first-hand accounts, they explored not only what the space may have looked like during its Gothic phase, but also how it changed over time to become the Octagon Drawing Room we know today.

One particularly fascinating section of the website, Survivors in Search of a Room, examines furniture and objects that may once have belonged to the lost Gothic interior. By comparing surviving items across the castle with inventories and documentary evidence, the students considered which objects, or types of objects, might have originally occupied the room.

They also considered how the room was experienced by the people who used it, using first-hand accounts to think about the social life of the space. These sources reveal glimpses of evening gatherings, where ladies met to socialise and share ghost stories, helping to bring the room to life.

Crucially, the project highlighted how much remains still to research. Does the missing drawing by R. Hughes still survive somewhere, and would it enable us to identify exactly which pieces of furniture were created for the Gothic revival drawing room? By bringing together the most current evidence, Betsey and Linhui have taken us one step closer to understanding the lost room while revealing exciting possibilities for future research.

Visit the website

If you want to find out more about this fascinating project, visit Linhui and Betsey’s interactive timeline below to discover how one room at Raby Castle has evolved over time, from a lost Gothic revival interior to the Octagon Drawing Room we know today.

Website link

Betsey and Linhui

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