Hamilton Palace and the Dukes of Hamilton and their Collections

The speaker, Dr Godfrey Evans is part of the Virtual Hamilton Palace trust which is digitally recreating the house and its collections. According to the trust’s website: ‘During the nineteenth century, the 10th Duke's collecting activities made the Palace internationally famous, a veritable treasure trove of amazing paintings, furniture and objets d'art which travellers came from far and wide to admire. Now dispersed throughout the world, many of these items are prime exhibits in important museums’ – for example, the dining room of the palace is preserved in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Many of the treasures in the house came from Fonthill Abbey near Bath, the fantastically Gothic home of the eccentric William Beckford, (said to be the wealthiest man in England – wealth derived from sugar plantations in Jamaica), whose daughter the 10th Duke married.