Punching Above My Weight

As you can imagine, works at the castle do not come cheap, so when you manage to furnish the castle with bargain purchases the joy is all the sweeter.

A newly restored basement room, originally the female servants' sitting room, holds a beautiful large antique bookcase. However, there are no books in the bookcase, and this looks awful as far as recreating a historic mood is concerned.  Over the last 6 months or so, I have been moving books that I finish reading into these shelves, to make them look more populated

However, I realised this was not going to cut it, as these books are modern and although reading is one of my favourite things, I was never going to fill the cavernous shelves at my slow rate of getting through books.

I decided to keep an eye out for job-lots of period volumes with attractive spines. It wasn't an active hunt and if I didn't get something in the next year, then it would not be an issue.

Last Thursday, 17 September 2026, this set of bound volumes of Punch came up for auction at Taylor's Auctions in Montrose. These were perfect as I already have Victorian bounds sets of Punch filling bookcases at the castle, so I could decorate consistently, although this selection does look more 20th Century. Anyhow, in the end, I managed to bag the 103 volumes for £50!

photo from online auction catalogue

I picked up the volumes today. Previously, I have had to box-up and move the books myself, but when I arrived the staff had already boxed them up and indeed transported them into my wee van. Nowadays, moving heavy items is much more difficult for me, so I was deeply appreciative that I had been spared the struggle. 

decanting books from the back of my wee van

I filled a sample shelf to judge the look. The books look very much at home. The ones which came out of the back of my van first were 1930 to 1940. I naturally wondered how Punch had responded to the declaration of WWII on the 1st September 1939.

one shelf filled!

It's actually quite frightening, the 6th September edition is full of war stories; the one from the 28th August is not. This shows a society that was taken by surprise. There is one chilling illustration of Hitler looking into a crystal ball labelled "1914" and seeing a skull i.e. a prediction that WWII is going to be a bloodbath comparable to that of 1914.  The cartoon was more on the nose than anyone could ever have imagined at the time.  I was going to put the image here, but it just was too dark.

Instead, here is a mildly witty but revealing illustration with an architectural flavour as befits this blog.

page from 6th August 1939

I recall my Dad regaling me with tales of people who buy "books by the yard" just to look good on their bookshelves. There was amused and amusing mock outrage. :-) The context of this remark is that my Dad is the biggest reader I have ever met in my life, bar none. He took out 4 library books every week, and read them cover-to-cover. This is in addition to the newspapers we took (typically 3 a day) and his own private collection of books. There was one enormous bookcase of railway books (my grandfather was a stationmaster) and one enormous bookcase of art books - reflecting some of his passions. These were assuredly read cover-to-cover.

When I was looking for books for the castle, and forewarned by my father, I did check out "books by the yard" but could not find any. However, "books by the metre" did get plenty of google hits. Presented below is a screen grab from a "books by the foot" website. £50 is a typical price.  

Thankfully, I did not betray my father, as I found out books can be bought in bulk very cheaply if they are the "Encyclopaedia Britannica", editions of "Punch" and works by Dickens and (particularly) Sir Walter Scott.

Most of the Punches are "half-calf" which means the spine is leather rather than the whole cover, so they work well on a book-shelf. The "leather" may actually be as leatherette even though the texture has "pores" and the scuffs show an underlying light brown, and they are certainly not the very posh hand-made bindings where there are ridges down the spine where the string holds the pages together.

Anyhow, I hope you appreciate these tips on how to avoid skewering your intellectual credibility with books by the foot.

Temu Ransom

I am installing a couple of chandeliers in the newly restored drawing room. I purchased these from eBay near the start of the project. This is a long, long time ago. :-)

If memory serves, I picked them up in person from Bridgenorth. The seller was also disposing of a vast quantity of second-hand lighting, and being able to inspect the goods in person, I took the opportunity to stock up.  I was aware, even then, of the high cost of large light fittings. I only regret one of the pairs of ceiling lights I bought, which look too much like 1980's reproductions and have such dark brown shades that their illumination is very poor.

Anyhow, the chandeliers require 12 matching shades. Glass shades of the appropriate size start from £80, making a minimum spend of £960. Eeeek! I found an suitable acrylic shade on Temu at £11 , so ordered a couple to assess the fit and the look.

The critical dimension is the brass gallery which holds the neck of the "glass" shade. I have a 4 1/4" gallery, obviously designed to take a 4" (102mm) neck. However. the Temu neck was just 95mm, so I was uncertain. Anyhow, the samples arrived on Saturday and thankfully the look and fit are great. Once installed on the ceiling, there's no way to tell the shades are not glass. The shade neck is indeed a little narrow, but I suspect no-one will ever notice.

I went to order the other 10 shades today and found out that Temu has increased the price to £17 and only 9 were left in stock at this "discounted?" price. I suspect this is a deliberate scam to catch repeat customers. I went in under another account and still saw the price hoick, but I am pretty certain there are other ways of knowing that it is still you.

Anyhow, I had to start a separate order item for the remaining shades at "full price", but the full price was still £17. Then Temu added on £27 import tax. Is this legitimate? I felt like I had no choice but to go ahead with the order, on the basis I was still winning on overall price.

Some later research showed that Temu orders over ~£130 do incur import tax, so I will know in future to break up a larger order and indeed to avoid repeat orders. It should have been simpler. Given that Temu market so aggressively, I was very nervous of an aggressive pricing structure once they have got you hooked.

Anyhow, looking forward to completing all the finishing touches in the Drawing Room. Gregor, my builder, says he will start laying the oak floor after he returns from a holiday in Malta.

Temu shades on 1980's reproduction Victorian chandelier