The Silich Collection of Historical and Art Medals (Part I)

ENGLAND, Manchester & Liverpool Agricultural Society, a silver award medal by T. Ottley, farmyard scene with cattle, sheep and hay wagon, rev. wreath, named (Messrs. C.D. Young & Co, of Liverpool, for exhibiting an Anti-Metallic Churn Invented & patented by Mr P.R. Drummond, Octr. 7 1851), 48mm, 59.63g (cf. DNW M13, 1264). Some peripheral toning, otherwise extremely fine; set in a glazed lunette with silver band, clip and ring for suspension £150-£200

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Silich Collection of Historical and Art Medals.

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bt Simmons, June 2014

Charles Denoon Young (1822-87), b. Legerwood, Berwickshire, was an ironworker, engineer and salesman, initially working in Edinburgh. In 1847 he became a wire merchant in Glasgow, before moving back to Edinburgh. By 1852 he was said to employ 700 people with operations in both Scottish cities, as well as in Liverpool and Chelsea, London. Sequestrated for the first of many times in 1858 owing £80,000 to his bankers, his fortunes ebbed and flowed until, in 1874 and living at Inveralmond House, the procurator fiscal at Perth laid charges of wilful fraud and fraudulent bankruptcy against him. Discharged in March 1877, he moved to Hornsey Rise, London, in 1881, where the census records him as a civil engineer. In London he had been responsible for erecting the first Chelsea Bridge (opened in 1858 and replaced in 1937).

Peter Robert Drummond (1802-79), b. Madderty, Perthshire, initially established himself as a circulating bookseller before taking over premises in central Perth which later passed to his cousin John Drummond. Something of an inventor, he turned to farming and his creation of an anti-metallic churn won for him a second medal at the Great Exhibition of 1851; he received an honourable mention for another invention at the 1862 Exhibition. He retired from farming in 1873.

Sold with much further biographical detail. The Manchester Agricultural Society (instituted 1767) and the Liverpool Agricultural Society (instituted 1830) merged to form the Manchester and Liverpool Agricultural Society, instituted in November 1847. A similar medal also awarded at the Society’s show in Manchester on 7 October 1851 was sold in these rooms on 1 December 1993, lot 143.