Hornseys - the gallery

15/06/2026

Five first editions from the heroic age of Everest.

This remarkable group brings together the principal British Everest expedition accounts from 1921 to 1936: the first reconnaissance, the 1922 assault, the tragic 1924 expedition of Mallory and Irvine, and Hugh Ruttledge’s later attempts in 1933 and 1936.

All plates and maps have been collated and are complete.

A foundational Everest collection, documenting the mountain before its first successful ascent and preserving the ambition, danger, tragedy and extraordinary endurance of Britain’s early Himalayan expeditions.

Now available on our website priced at £600.

https://hornseys.com/product/the-british-mount-everest-expeditions-1921-1936-five-first-edition-expedition-accounts-howard-bury-bruce-norton-and-ruttledge-1922-1937/

12/06/2026

What was Yorkshire reading in the year of Peterloo?

Fresh into stock: a remarkable collection of 16 original issues of The Hull Advertiser and Exchange Gazette from 1819.

These newspapers provide a fascinating week-by-week record of life in Regency Britain during one of the most turbulent years of the nineteenth century.

Among the contents are:

⚖️ The conviction of William Bateman for Highway Robbery.

🏛 Proceedings of Radical Reformers published only days before the Peterloo Massacre.

🌍 Government-backed emigration schemes to the Cape of Good Hope.

🎈 Contemporary reports of the tragic death of pioneering aeronaut Madame Sophie Blanchard.

🚢 Greenland whaling voyages, shipping intelligence and steam packet services.

📚 Advertisements for British Zoology, Egyptian Scenery and Antiquities and Dr Syntax in London.

💊 Quack medicines including Dr Boerhaave's Red Pill No. 2.

🎖 A remarkable government sale of military surplus following the Napoleonic Wars, including:
• 721 Flanders tents
• 15,000 blue coats
• 4,000 red coats
• 7,000 grey trousers
• 15,000 knapsacks
• 6,000 canteens

Together these newspapers form an extraordinary archive of crime, politics, commerce, transport, empire and everyday life in Yorkshire exactly as contemporary readers encountered it in 1819.

10/06/2026

A Victorian Windmill For Sale...

In July 1894, prospective buyers gathered at the George Hotel in Rye to bid on a working smock windmill at Gibbet Marsh.

This remarkable set of auction particulars describes the mill in detail, including its machinery, millstones, dwelling accommodation and associated buildings. Also included in the sale were a baker's shop in Ferry Road and even a £200 life assurance policy.

Gibbet Marsh has been associated with windmills for centuries and remains one of Rye's most distinctive historic landscapes. Today the surviving windmill on Ferry Road is one of the town's most recognisable landmarks, but documents showing these mills as working commercial enterprises are rarely encountered.

A wonderful survival of Sussex industrial, agricultural and local history.

10/06/2026

Geisha waitresses in Hessle? Well, almost...

This remarkable illustrated broadside advertises a Grand Japanese Fête held in Hessle Parish Hall in aid of Hessle National Schools. Probably dating from 1894, it was organised to help clear the debt on newly enlarged school buildings.

Victorian Britain was gripped by a craze for all things Japanese, and fundraising events often featured "Japanese" costumes, decorations, tea rooms and waitresses dressed as geishas. What seems unusual today was considered fashionable and exotic entertainment in late nineteenth-century England.

This Hessle example is particularly charming, with its decorative border of Japanese figures, local dignitaries, concerts, dramatic performances, fancy-work stalls and refreshments. Intended for temporary display, it somehow survived while most were thrown away.

This wonderful glimpse of Victorian Yorkshire meeting Victorian Japan is now available on our website.

09/06/2026

New Arrival: Chad Valley Mohair Teddy Bear, c.1953–1959

We are pleased to offer this attractive Chad Valley teddy bear, standing approximately 42 cm (16½ inches) tall and retaining its original foot label bearing the Royal Warrant of H.M. Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother.

Dating from the 1950s, the bear is fully jointed and covered in golden-beige mohair, with a particularly appealing expression and excellent overall presentation. The floral dress accompanying the bear is a charming period addition, although it is not original Chad Valley clothing.

Royal Warrant-labelled Chad Valley bears remain among the most sought-after British teddy bears of the post-war period and continue to attract collectors for their quality, history and character.

Available now on our website:

https://hornseys.com/product/chad-valley-mohair-teddy-bear-with-queen-mother-royal-warrant-label-c-1953-1959/

For further details and photographs, please visit our website or contact the gallery.

Chad Valley

08/06/2026

One of our favourite recent finds.

This rare 1818 Yorkshire broadside advertises the sale by auction of the historic Aldbrough Corn Mill following the bankruptcy of miller Robert Cuthbert. The sale was held at the Cross Keys Inn in Hull, one of the town's principal commercial inns, and the broadside even highlights the mill's "Patent Sails" — an advanced technological feature for the period.

What makes it particularly appealing is that the mill itself can still be traced through the historical record. The Aldbrough Corn Mill remained a landmark of the Holderness landscape until its dismantling in 1930, with photographs, deeds and archival records surviving today. This broadside therefore records a specific moment in the life of a known Yorkshire windmill more than two centuries ago.

Intended for temporary use and usually discarded, such auction broadsides rarely survive, especially when they relate to identifiable industrial and agricultural sites.

This wonderful piece of East Riding history is now available on our website:

https://hornseys.com/product/aldbrough-corn-mill-rare-regency-yorkshire-broadside-advertising-the-sale-by-auction-of-the-historic-aldbrough-windmill-hull-1818/

03/06/2026

An unexpected insight into nineteenth-century legal reform.

This autograph letter from Baron von Bunsen, the distinguished Prussian diplomat and ambassador in London, records his efforts to gather expert English legal opinion on the reform of Prussian divorce law.

Writing to the eminent judge Sir John Taylor Coleridge, Bunsen explains that he has received from the King of Prussia:

"a very important, but equally difficult enterprise ... as to the reform of our divorce law"

and wishes to better understand the state and practical operation of English matrimonial legislation.

Far from being a routine social note, the letter offers a fascinating glimpse into the exchange of legal ideas between Britain and continental Europe during the nineteenth century.

Bunsen's correspondence also places him among some of the most influential intellectual and political circles of Victorian Britain, with references to the Archbishop of York, Oxford, Cambridge and the Arnold family of Fox How.

This remarkable survival connecting diplomacy, legal history and international reform is now available on our website priced at £250.

03/06/2026

A remarkable Boer War letter written on the eve of departure for South Africa.

This autograph letter, dated 25 February 1900 and signed by Lieutenant-Colonel Walter Somerset Barttelot of the Royal Sussex Regiment, was written from Stopham House, Pulborough just weeks before embarkation.

Barttelot thanks the recipient for good wishes regarding “our going to the war in South Africa” and records that he expected to sail from Southampton aboard the RMS Tintagel Castle, one of the troopships carrying men and supplies to the Boer War.

The letter also refers to the farewell given to local volunteers and notes that “Harrison at Chichester is to take charge of the Company during my absence”, providing a fascinating glimpse into the practical realities of mobilisation in Sussex during the conflict.

Most poignantly, Barttelot would die in South Africa later that same year, giving this letter the character of a final farewell before active service.

Now available on our website.

03/06/2026

One of the most controversial figures in the history of the Jack the Ripper investigation.

An autograph letter signed by Sir Charles Warren, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police during the Whitechapel murders of 1888, written from his residence at 10 Wellington Crescent, Ramsgate, on 1 December 1901.

Warren remains inseparably linked with the Ripper case and, in particular, the famous Goulston Street Graffito. On the night of the "Double Event", a bloodstained fragment of Catherine Eddowes's apron was discovered beneath a chalk message in Goulston Street. Fearing anti-Jewish unrest in the East End, Warren authorised the removal of the writing before it could be photographed—a decision still debated by historians and Ripper researchers more than a century later.

Beyond the Whitechapel murders, Warren enjoyed a remarkable career as a Royal Engineer, explorer, archaeologist, colonial administrator and Boer War general, later becoming associated with the controversial Battle of Spion Kop.

This 1901 letter, addressed to Hendry of the 1st Battalion, concerns the presentation of shooting prizes and provides a fascinating link to one of Victorian Britain's most famous and controversial public figures.

Now available on our website priced at £275:

https://hornseys.com/product/autograph-letter-signed-charles-warren-to-hendry-of-the-1st-battalion-the-buffs-1st-december-1901/

02/06/2026

❄️ A remarkable survival from Victorian Hull.

This apparently unrecorded programme for Hengler’s Grand Cirque, Anlaby Road, is dated 17 October 1882 and documents one of the most ambitious entertainments of its day: A Carnival on the Ice.

Far more than a circus programme, it records a spectacular nine-scene production transforming the arena into a brilliantly illuminated winter landscape. Audiences were treated to a Skating Cotillion, Procession of Sledges, Zoological Curiosities, Punch & Judy, Fancy and Scientific Skating, trained animals, comic interludes, and a dramatic finale entitled “The Snow Storm.”

The programme offers a fascinating glimpse into the evolution of Victorian popular entertainment, when circus proprietors increasingly combined equestrian performance, theatre, music, scenic illusion and spectacle to create immersive experiences on an unprecedented scale.

Printed in Hull by Plaxton, Foster & Co. of Whitefriargate and surviving in remarkably good condition, it appears to be an unrecorded example of one of Hengler’s most intriguing productions.

A wonderful piece of circus history, skating history, and Hull history all in one. Available now on our website priced at £395.