A REGENCY mahogany bookcase which once graced the library of Woodfold Hall, Mellor, will go under the hammer next month.

The piece, by Gillows of Lancaster, will be sold on October 7, by auctioneer Woolley & Wallis at its Salisbury salerooms.

The bookcase was commissioned in 1805, by Henry Sudell, who made his fortune as a cotton merchant and manufacturer, for his newly-built country house Woodfold Hall.

It took 10 weeks to make and cost Henry £33. 6s. 4d – today its presale estimate is between £8,000 and £12,000.

Woodfold Hall was a grand mansion, with more than 20 rooms on the ground floor, which had its own dairy and brew house, as well as a 17ft china closet, writes Matthew Cole for www.cottontown.org.

The 400-acre estate, surrounded by a nine feet high wall, four miles long, was stocked with deer, wildfowl and a pack of hunting dogs.

Henry, who travelled into Blackburn in a grand coach-and-four with uniformed postillions, supported many of his fellow townsmen in lean times.

He roasted an ox in the old marketplace every Christmas, founded St John's church in Blackburn and St Mary’s in Mellor and helped recruitment to the Lancashire Fencibles.

When 6,000 handloom weavers marched on Woodfold from Blakey Moor in 1818, Henry acceded to their demand for a five per cent advance and even when his high living caught up with him in 1827, he left his butler with enough money to establish himself at the Fox and Grapes pub in Preston New Road.

After fleeing Blackburn, his grand lifestyle at the hall was continued by John Fowden Hindle as High Sheriff of Lancashire.

In 1849 it was bought by the Thwaites family and was, for many years, home to Elma Yerburgh, daughter of Daniel Thwaites, who took over the business on his death in 1888 when she was 24.

She was at the helm during two world wars and the depression of the 1920s and 1930s.

In 1949, three years after her death, its contents of nearly 800 elegant and valuable items, were auctioned in a mammoth three-day sale.

Woodfold Park has two listed buildings: a bridge over the Arley Brook and an ice house in Old Woodfold Wood, believed to have been built around 1800s, predominantly below ground.