Antiquities from the bequest of Abraham Kirkmann at Browsholme Hall

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A remarkable network of connoisseurs and antiquaries has been revealed in the process of searching out the antiquities collected by Abraham Charles Kirkmann and those conveyed by his will (1866) to Thomas Goulbourne Parker of Browsholme Hall. He also bequeathed a large collection of pictures, mainly historical prints, including a portrait of S.R. Meyrick, to the Honourable Society of Greys Inn Court. J. M.W. Turner had painted the exterior of Browsholme, c.1800, and it was probably through Thomas Lister Parker, a previous owner, that Sir John Leicester, of Tabley, Parker’s cousin, and his friend Walter Fawkes of Farnley, became the painter’s principal patrons in the north of England. Turner took a great interest in the weapons and armour of the Civil War at Farnley and made an album of watercolours entitled ‘Fairfaxiana’. Kirkmann was a friend of Thomas Goulborne Parker and an intimate of Samuel Rush Meyrick for whom he searched out books and artefacts to add to the collections at Goodrich Court. In 1857, the year before his death, T.L. Parker, visited the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition, a vast display which attracted over one million visitors and included a large selection of Meyrick’s weapons and armour arranged by J.R. Planché.