States—lived in small cottages elsewhere on the estate.
As much as anything, what intrigued me was the way Richard Smith and his wife, Elizabeth, the daughter of an important coal and iron master from England’s Midlands—had entertained like old-country royalty. At its peak, Mount Rundell rivalled theprovincial legislature as the most historic and important building in the province. At one point Lord Stanley visited, as did the Earl of Musgrave; and Sir William Fenwick Williams, a hero of the Crimean War. Prime Minister Charles Tupper eventually put in an appearance. So did Joseph Howe, the reformer and newspaper publisher. Fittingly, the great men of the burgeoning field of earth science—Dawson and Lyell—also appeared, drawn by the area’s fabulous coal seams.
To my mind you couldn’t beat the symbolism: this estate with its sweep of green lawn and long, curved carriage drive, completely surrounded by a hawthorn hedge, standing atop a hill on the edge of a scruffy little colliery town.
Two hundred years later, the grand buildings had been ripped down, and the grounds subdivided. It was near-impossible to find a hint of the mansion’s existence.
“Mount what?” a local old-timer said, when I asked about the house.
When I mentioned the General Mining Association, that rang a bell, but he was sketchy on the details. So I went home and tried to piece together the story of the GMA and coal-mining in Nova Scotia. That quest led me to London somewhere around the middle of the eighteenth century, when a man named Hart dealt in toys and fishing tackle in St. Paul’s Churchyard, “at the sign of the golden salmon.” “Business prospering, he moved to no. 32 Ludgate Hill, where he added the sale of cheap, light jewelry and box and other combs” to his line of merchandise. A man named Theed took over from Hart, took in a partner named Pickett and introduced “the sale of plate.” Somebody invited Philip Rundell, the youngest of sixteen, who had served his apprenticeship with a Bath jeweller, to work in their silversmith’s shop. Pickett, it developed, had political ambitions—serving as a London aldermanin 1782, sheriff in 1784 and lord mayor in 1790—and increasingly left the business to Rundell, who wasn’t devoid of ambition himself. One day, finding Theed in a “dissatisfied humour,” he persuaded him to sell out. “And thus,” wrote George Fox, the author of what may well be one of the earliest corporate histories in English, “he [Rundell] placed himself at the head of the House which afterwards was to become the object of envy to all the Trade and the wonder almost of the World.”
In time Rundell was joined by John Bridge, who had served his apprenticeship with the same Bath jeweller. Rundell, who Fox wrote “was naturally of a violent disposition, very sly, and cunning and suspicious,” minded the shop; charming, urbane Bridge was the outside “contact” man, a “complete courtier,” well fitted for “beating the bush to drive the game to Ludgate Hill.” In Georgian England a little charm could get a person a long way; in 1797 Rundell and Bridge were appointed one of the royal goldsmiths, and seven years later they received the royal warrant to supply the Crown with plate, jewels, medals, insignia and even works in ormolu and bronze.
By the 1820s—thanks to Bridge’s charm, Rundell’s ruthlessness and the sheer beauty of their product—the pair headed a vast enterprise with agencies in Paris, Vienna, St. Petersburg, Baghdad, Constantinople, Bombay, Calcutta, and various cities in South America. The British royal family—particularly George III, who used to shower jewels on his mistresses and members of his inner circle and was as mad for silver-gilt and gilt bronze as his rival Napoleon—adored their plate and jewels. With time, according to antiques scholar Christopher Hartop, it got so that “the affable Bridge would leave Ludgate Hill every morning with his trademark blue
As much as anything, what intrigued me was the way Richard Smith and his wife, Elizabeth, the daughter of an important coal and iron master from England’s Midlands—had entertained like old-country royalty. At its peak, Mount Rundell rivalled theprovincial legislature as the most historic and important building in the province. At one point Lord Stanley visited, as did the Earl of Musgrave; and Sir William Fenwick Williams, a hero of the Crimean War. Prime Minister Charles Tupper eventually put in an appearance. So did Joseph Howe, the reformer and newspaper publisher. Fittingly, the great men of the burgeoning field of earth science—Dawson and Lyell—also appeared, drawn by the area’s fabulous coal seams.
To my mind you couldn’t beat the symbolism: this estate with its sweep of green lawn and long, curved carriage drive, completely surrounded by a hawthorn hedge, standing atop a hill on the edge of a scruffy little colliery town.
Two hundred years later, the grand buildings had been ripped down, and the grounds subdivided. It was near-impossible to find a hint of the mansion’s existence.
“Mount what?” a local old-timer said, when I asked about the house.
When I mentioned the General Mining Association, that rang a bell, but he was sketchy on the details. So I went home and tried to piece together the story of the GMA and coal-mining in Nova Scotia. That quest led me to London somewhere around the middle of the eighteenth century, when a man named Hart dealt in toys and fishing tackle in St. Paul’s Churchyard, “at the sign of the golden salmon.” “Business prospering, he moved to no. 32 Ludgate Hill, where he added the sale of cheap, light jewelry and box and other combs” to his line of merchandise. A man named Theed took over from Hart, took in a partner named Pickett and introduced “the sale of plate.” Somebody invited Philip Rundell, the youngest of sixteen, who had served his apprenticeship with a Bath jeweller, to work in their silversmith’s shop. Pickett, it developed, had political ambitions—serving as a London aldermanin 1782, sheriff in 1784 and lord mayor in 1790—and increasingly left the business to Rundell, who wasn’t devoid of ambition himself. One day, finding Theed in a “dissatisfied humour,” he persuaded him to sell out. “And thus,” wrote George Fox, the author of what may well be one of the earliest corporate histories in English, “he [Rundell] placed himself at the head of the House which afterwards was to become the object of envy to all the Trade and the wonder almost of the World.”
In time Rundell was joined by John Bridge, who had served his apprenticeship with the same Bath jeweller. Rundell, who Fox wrote “was naturally of a violent disposition, very sly, and cunning and suspicious,” minded the shop; charming, urbane Bridge was the outside “contact” man, a “complete courtier,” well fitted for “beating the bush to drive the game to Ludgate Hill.” In Georgian England a little charm could get a person a long way; in 1797 Rundell and Bridge were appointed one of the royal goldsmiths, and seven years later they received the royal warrant to supply the Crown with plate, jewels, medals, insignia and even works in ormolu and bronze.
By the 1820s—thanks to Bridge’s charm, Rundell’s ruthlessness and the sheer beauty of their product—the pair headed a vast enterprise with agencies in Paris, Vienna, St. Petersburg, Baghdad, Constantinople, Bombay, Calcutta, and various cities in South America. The British royal family—particularly George III, who used to shower jewels on his mistresses and members of his inner circle and was as mad for silver-gilt and gilt bronze as his rival Napoleon—adored their plate and jewels. With time, according to antiques scholar Christopher Hartop, it got so that “the affable Bridge would leave Ludgate Hill every morning with his trademark blue
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