Lovely Loos
3 March 2022
There are plenty of consumers willing to spend much more than a penny on antique toilets.
Fergus Butler Gallie
The Reverend Fergus Butler-Gallie is a clergyman and the author of A Field Guide to the English Clergy, a Best Book of the Year for The Times, Mail on Sunday and BBC History.
Antique Doulton and Co Glazed Toilet, circa 1890.
Image courtesy of UK Heritage.
For those of us of a particular disposition- or bladder size- the breaks provided in cultural proceedings, be it the interval of a play or half time at the football, have only one purpose. Leave others to their ice cream or their burgers; I make a beeline for the loo. As such, the loos of our cultural hotspots have become well known to me- the silver troughs of Twickenham, the old school guttering of Lords, the porcelain monotony that now dominates the West End. All observably different, but hardly worthy of visiting in themselves surely? Certainly not collectibles in their own right?
Well, there you’d be wrong. Some months ago I was fortunate enough to attend the Royal Opera House and sit in the Duke of Bedford’s former box. Covent Garden had been built on Bedford land and so their Graces had a box, complete with private dining room, built as part of the development. The box is glorious, the dining room even more so, but my host told to me, after the first act of Jenufa that the thing I really had to see was the ornate and original private loo.
It transpires that there are plenty of other loos that are more than just ‘must sees’ but ‘must own’ as well- and they cost more than just a penny. UK Heritage sells a panoply of lavatories- coming in varying states of completeness. From £1,495 for a solitary cistern with the rather endearing name of ‘Cedric’, decorated with what looks like a daring combo of Versace shirt designs and skid marks to £2,375 for a complete hand glazed Royal Doulton lavatory replete with mahogany seat. It might be the most perfectly Victorian object I have ever seen- in equal parts stern, beautiful, practical, and weird.
Of course it was the Victorians- with a particularly reverent dip of the seat to Mr Crapper- who revolutionised how it was that we spend our pennies and so it is hardly surprising that much of the market for antique lavatoralia is dominated by pieces from the 19th and early twentieth centuries. There are, however exceptions; the odd item from a less sanitary age. J Collins and Son of Bideford, for instance, offer a pewter Georgian chamber pot for the very reasonable sum of £165. It is not quite so delicate a thing as some of its contemporaries would have been but, given it was mostly used in the dark, that hardly seems to matter.
Whilst most of the antique loos- in varying states of completeness- still have a practical use and so are marketed alongside other salvaged bathroom pieces, chamber pots are more of an ornamental purchase. Nowadays, when we have, via encroaching personal hygiene and social mores, regrettably robbed free born Englishmen of the right to micturate in his own bedroom, such a piece might best serve as a fitting planter for some sort of plant. Perhaps asparagus?
Not all chamber pots, however, are created equal. Madelena Antiques and Collectibles offer this specimen of 1905, with an Art Nouveau design, for a mere £385. This pair of Wemyss Ware pots with an apple design from 1900 from Carse Antiques are on the market for a little more- £895- but the romance of offering one’s significant other a matching chamber pot as a romantic gift is surely priceless. The portability of pots means they are much more regularly on the market than more stolid lavatories. Even the private pissoirs of historical titans have found their way into auction houses. Admittedly, Napoleon never did get to use the classically inspired specimen designed for him by George Bullock in 1815, the association was enough for it to fetch £2,880 when it came up at Bonham’s in 2005.
Victorian blue and white transfer decorated ‘Cedric’ WC or toilet pan, circa 1900.
Image courtesy of UK Heritage.
There are, however, even pricier lavatories out there. I stayed recently with the chaplain to the Duke of Rutland, the Reverend Simon Shouler. He is immensely proud of the mud-walled back-to-back loos at the Old Manor House in Long Clawson, where he lives. As with my previous ducal lavatory experience, I was informed that I must see the loo. The Reverend Mr Shouler is not the only enthusiast for his outdoor privy- indeed they are registered with CAMROT (The Campaign for Real Outdoor Toilets). They recently put out an appeal via their founder, Ian White, for a buyer for a unusual opportunity to purchase an ornate Victorian street urinal, on the site of what was a much older public ‘bog house’ by the wall of Lincolns Inn. It is a beautiful thing- green iron tracery, replete with the Royal Arms. The only issue is that this superior urinal comes with a whole building attached and consequently, will set you back £3.9 million. Better off sticking to spending pennies, perhaps.
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