The Preston-Morley Buckinghamshire Collection: Commemorative Medals

THE PRESTON-MORLEY BUCKINGHAMSHIRE COLLECTION, Centenary of the Death of William Cowper, 1900, white metal medals (3), unsigned [perhaps by F. Bowcher], for Spink, bust facing, head turned to left, wearing long-coat and cap, rev. to commemorate the gift of the poet cowper’s house to the town of olney by w.h. collingridge esq. 25th april 1900 around wreath of palm, all 38mm (Morley, SNC July 1977, pp.251-4, one medal illustrated; BHM 3667; Grant, BNJ XXIII, p.352) [3]. One brilliant and practically as struck on a slightly heavier [18.58g] flan, others very fine or better, one pierced for suspension; sold with a considerable amount of original background research and documentation (£50-100)

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Preston-Morley Buckinghamshire Collection: Commemorative Medals.

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Provenance:
*Heavy flan Glendining Auction, 27 September 1973, lot 650 (part).
VF example Christie’s Auction, 6 February 1973, lot 102 (part);
bt B. Dawson February 1973.
Pierced example presented to the Cowper & Newton Museum, January 1973, by a lady in Sunderland whose family came from Olney; bt Cowper & Newton Museum [as a duplicate] Feb. 1973.

Some 600 medals were struck at Spink’s Soho Metal Works, 21 St Anne’s Court, London W, to the order of Oliver Ratcliff, the Olney printer whose works were situated on the present-day site of Saul’s Garage, Olney. Sold with a copy of Spink’s Numismatic Circular, June 1977, containing the article ‘The Cowper Centenary and Medal, 1900’ by Peter Morley, two original drafts of the article, a photocopy of the Report of the Proceedings at Olney on April 25, 1900, by Ratcliff, copies of pages from the Bucks Standard and Newport Pagnell Gazette reporting on the event, a booklet on William Cowper by Thomas Wright, and several ALS from Vincent Collingridge, grandson of W.H. Collingridge (1827-1905) of City Press fame, who acquired Cowper’s house in 1854 and presented it to the town on centenary day, and from the late Olney historian Sidney Morgan, who wrote on 20.vii.1976 “I have the medal given to me as one of the schoolchildren assembled in the Market Place, Olney, on 25 April 1900.”

William Cowper (1731-1800), poet and composer of hymns who spent the most productive years of his life at Olney and nearby Weston Underwood