Elizabethan oak tester bed from Godolphin House, £20,000 at Woolley & Wallis.
Measuring 5ft 8in (1.73m) wide, this piece was once part of the furniture at Godolphin House, Helston, Cornwall, the ancestral seat of the Godolphin tin-mining family.
In 2007 the Scholfield family, owners since the 1930s, sold the house to the National Trust with the selected contents, including this bed, auctioned by Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood in Exeter in July 2008.
Most 16th century oak tester beds offered at auction have considerable repairs and alterations.
However, the condition, colour and finish of this piece were all considered ‘excellent’. There were some minor repairs (the ends of the headboard posts have been spliced, with associated iron braces added) but most was as it had been c.1580.
Once upon a time it might have made a mighty sum – but the market is not easy for any large piece of oak furniture. It did sell but only to a single bidder at the lower end of a £20,000-30,000 estimate.
