Cotton Library - The Ashburnham House Fire

The Ashburnham House Fire

On 23 October 1731, there was a fire in Ashburnham House, and many manuscripts were lost, while others were badly singed or water-damaged - up to a quarter of the collection was either destroyed or damaged. The librarian, Dr. Bentley, escaped the fire while clutching the priceless Codex Alexandrinus under one arm, a scene witnessed and later described in a letter to Charlotte, Lady Sundon, by Robert Freind, headmaster of Westminster School. Mr. Speaker Onslow, as one of the statutory trustees of the library, directed and personally supervised a remarkable programme of restoration within the resources of his time. The published report of this work is of major importance in bibliography. Fortunately, copies had been made of some, but by no means all, of those works that were lost, and many of those damaged could be restored in the nineteenth century. Among the most important works to be damaged was the Byzantine Cotton Genesis, the illustrations of which nevertheless remain an important record of Late Antique iconography.