The Bedroom

This room is now furnished and decorated in the style of Johnston's rooms at Chandpara. Johnston used yellow in many parts of that house and one suspects the colour, fashionable at that time, was a way of making a cold house seem warmer.

There are some superb examples of 19th-century English furniture and a profusion of portraits, miniatures and silhouettes, reminiscent of their use in Regency interiors.

This collection of miniatures found in many of the rooms ranges from a possible early example by Mary Beale of the Countess of Dorchester to examples by George Engleheart (c.1750-1829), Henry Bone (1755-1834) and Edward Dayes (1763-1804).

The bedroom also contains two very fine chests of drawers, notably a bow-fronted Regency three-drawer chest with ebony stringing and cock beading, retaining its original mounts (c.1800), and the other a mahogany, serpentine-fronted Sheraton period chest (c.1800).

The bed is Anglo-Indian (c.1820) with a modern canopy. In contrast, next to the bed is a very simple late 18th-century mahogany bureau and, on the other side, another understated piece: an early 19th-century tiered stand or whatnot.