Folio (546 x 355 mm.) Sometime re-backed in quarter bottle-green morocco period style, over the original dark green pebble-grain cloth-covered boards, the upper board retaining the original red morocco and elaborately gilt-stamped label; engraved title leaf, printed dedication leaf (dated January 1st, 1830), pp. ii, preface, 15, [1] + 19 full-page engraved plates numbered 2-20, the title leaf counted as plate 1, 1 engraved vignette on india paper to the dedication leaf, 1 engraved tailpiece on india paper to p.14; the front gutter sometime sympathetically reinforced with linen, the rear free endpaper sometime renewed, occasional very light scattered spotting to the plates, less so than is usual, confined in the main to the margins, very light, localised offsetting to the verso of plates 2, 10 and 13 and 19, otherwise a bright, clean copy.

A valuable record of the Late Gothic carved wooden fittings, including the pulpit, altar, choir stalls and panelling installed by Sir Robert Napier at some point in the seventeenth-century in the first chapel on the site at Luton Hoo, a large portion of it having, in all probability, been removed from one of the side chapels in the parish church at Luton. Henry Shaw’s work shows the fittings as they were subsequently installed in the estate’s new private chapel, designed and built in 1816 by Robert Smirke for the Marquess of Bute. The engraved plates after careful drawings by Shaw, are comprised of perspective views of the interior of the chapel, along with sections and details. The scholarly text was supplied by James Ingram the President of Trinity College, Oxford.

In 1843 the chapel was destroyed in a fire that also largely consumed the interior of the Adam house. The chapel was subsequently rebuilt for the Wernher family in a Russian Orthodox style.

BAL Early Printed Books 2988.

Stock number: 1083