HAREWOOD X BEAR BROOKSBANK
The story
Gawthorpe Hall was home to the Gascoigne, Wentworth and, latterly, Cutler families from its construction in 14th century until Henry Lascelles bought it in 1739 with the fortune he had made through the sugar and slave trades. Gawthorpe was a large medieval manor house with later 17th century alterations that had extensive gardens and out- buildings, but it was demolished and replaced by the grand new Palladian mansion on the top of the hill, Harewood House, or the ‘New House at Gawthorpe’ as it was originally known.
For years Gawthorpe remained buried, its exact location not known, until excavations by the Archaeology Department of the University of York in the summers of 2011 & 2012. As well as the foundations of the Gawthorpe buildings being revealed for the first time for 250 years, a whole host of artefacts were uncovered including glassware and ceramics, an almost complete 18th century chamber pot, medieval coins, copper buttons and a Bronze Age flint arrowhead. The most surprising discovery was a mysterious piece of jewellery: a small heart-shaped metal ring.
This is the Gawthorpe Ring. There is no certainty about its origins or purpose, but it may have been some kind of engagement ring, perhaps exchanged between servants. How, though, had this very personal and intimate object become buried in the foundations of the Hall?
Lovingly re-created by Bear Brooksbank in 18ct yellow gold, this unique design with its extraordinary history was made as a token of one person’s love for another - a sentiment just as true now as it was then.
