Animal bones found in the ruins of a North Yorkshire monastery that could, thrillingly, be the remains of England’s last known wolf are part of the collection. As are a celebrated Vermeer masterpiece, the Duke of Wellington’s false teeth, more than 60,000 coins and almost 300 dessert plates.
“It is eclectic,” said Kevin Booth, English Heritage’s head collections curator of the more than 1m objects in the charity’s care. “It is a slightly random collection and is just so intriguing. It is such a broad spectrum of material that has, in some ways, been accumulated, unlike a classic collection where there might be an element of selection.”
Booth was speaking about the launch of a fundraising campaign, the Million and More appeal, which aims to raise money to help care for and better understand the historic artefacts it looks after, whether neolithic flints or curtains.
English Heritage said rising costs and pressures on funding had put a strain on its ability to maintain and research what is an internationally important historic collection.
“It’s a huge and expensive undertaking,” said Booth. “We need the public’s help.”
Booth said there were many stories still to be uncovered from objects in its collection including the tantalising story of the Fountains Abbey wolf.
Although the abbey, near Ripon, is in the care of the National Trust, English Heritage is responsible for artefacts from the ruins.
They include a canine skull and bones that were excavated from a latrine shaft in the 1980s and were part of a larger collection of objects probably discarded when Henry VIII’s commissioners were dismantling the monastery in the 1500s.
They are in English Heritage’s archaeology store at Helmsley, North Yorkshire, and may be more exciting than they seem.
Jessica Peto, a University of Exeter researcher, is locating and examining potential wolf specimens in archaeological collections as part of her research into the animal’s extinction in the British Isles.
She heard about the Fountains specimen and is excited by it. “Were this to be a wolf,” said Booth, “it would be her last specimen.
“It is a classic example of the English Heritage collection. When you start to look closely at things you think ‘good heavens … hang on.”
Another research project examines almost 7,000 glass shards that have been excavated from Corbridge Roman Town on Hadrian’s Wall over the past century.
Only about 400 of the pieces are catalogued, meaning many possible stories about changing fashions, taste, wealth and more can still be uncovered.
There is a huge body of work there, said Booth, which might eventually lead to accepted storylines being countered.
“It comes back to the vastness of the task. It is not only to conserve and brush with a paintbrush, or whatever people imagine happens. It is to document, to record, to order and then make available for research and for people to study and say … ‘look what this actually tells us’.”
Other objects in the collection include a cannon gifted to an 11-year-old Elizabeth I, Queen Victoria’s stockings and the Duke of Wellington’s false teeth, which may, it has been speculated, have been real teeth from one of his soldiers who died in battle.
There are also more than 27,000 books, 8,000 photographs, 1,500 fragments of wallpaper and 700 chairs.
In one store, boxes of neolithic flints are, coincidentally, next door to an early computerised system for measuring the power of a nuclear explosion – “humanity’s earliest memories adjacent to the things designed to measure the last of our memories”, said Booth.
Among English Heritage’s art collection is Vermeer’s The Guitar Player at Kenwood House as well as paintings by Titian, Reynolds, Constable and Rembrandt.
Then there are the unattributed, far less well-executed works that might be important in their own right, said Booth. “It might be the only view we have of the interior of a particular room. However rotten the art might be … it is still valuable.”
English Heritage became a charity in 2015 and says it relies more and more on the generosity of members, visitors and local communities. It says it spends at least £600,000 a year to care for and store the collection, which means money for extra stuff is always tight.
“We are a charity, we need support and goodness this is a worthy cause,” said Booth. “It is an extraordinary collection, it is vast and there is huge potential in it and the whole point of doing this is to unlock that for everyone.”