Thomson Roddick & Medcalf

Robert Somervell’s A Protest against the Extension of Railways in the Lake District, published in Windermere in 1876, contains “articles thereon reprinted from the Saturday Review etc.”, and a nine page preface by one of those who objected to the intrusion of the railways into the Lake District – John Ruskin.

ONE of the top lots in the Thomson Roddick & Medcalf sale of July 18 was a privately printed volume of 1890 containing works by Dante, illustrated by Phoebe Traquair and supplied with notes by J.S. Black.

JUST two days after moving operations to new premises at Coleridge House, Shaddongate, Carlisle, the recently retitled firm Thomson Roddick & Medcalf celebrated with a special book sale and took a bid of £17,500 for one of the privately printed subscriber copies of Seven Pillars of Wisdom issued in 1926.

Silver spirit labels (‘Holland’ refers to Dutch Gin) are not quite two a penny, but they are among the cheapest drinking trinkets available.