Chatsworth’s attic sale

The Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth, with some of the items up for sale

As one auction house director explained to me long ago: “You have to remember: there are selling dukes and there are buying dukes.” Peregrine Cavendish, 12th Duke of Devonshire – “Stoker” to his family and friends (though he says he is not entirely sure how he acquired the nickname) – appears to be both.

This week, Sotheby’s, of which the duke is deputy chairman, announced a three-day “attic sale” at Chatsworth, the principal residence of the duke and duchess in Derbyshire. One of England’s most magnificent stately homes, it has been substantially refurbished in recent years, with the duke’s acquisitions of contemporary, fine and applied art as a key element.

The Sotheby’s sale is a big one. More than 1,000 lots and 20,000 objects will be on offer from October 5 to 7, with estimates ranging from an alluring £20 to £200,000 for William Kent chimneypieces removed from Devonshire House in London before it was demolished in the 1920s. This great dispersal is, in effect, a housekeeping exercise – “the driver for it is making space”, explains the 66-year-old duke. However, the recent sale of a rare early 16th-century bronze to the Prince of Liechtenstein for £10m was prompted by the need to raise some serious cash.

“The house, garden and park are run by a charity, the Chatsworth House Trust,” explains the Duke. “We need to raise some cash for alternative forms of investment to support the wider estate. The businesses there – mostly agriculture and minerals – need capital investment.” He pauses, considering his words: “I don’t really regard chattels as assets but they can have a significant value and so sometimes one cannot deny the fact that they are a way of raising capital.”

An 18th-century Italian table, with an estimate of £70,000-£100,000

We are sitting in the Lower Library, in the private part of the house, the duke downing glasses of estate-bottled water as he courteously answers my question of what part these sales play in the surprisingly exhaustive programme of refurbishment, restoration and reorganisation that he has instituted since moving into Chatsworth four and a half years ago. In all of this, the acquisition and commissioning of contemporary sculpture, ceramics and fine art – and their judicious and, at times, mischievous integration into the historic interiors and park – continue to play a favoured part. In spite of his languorous manner, the duke is a busy man.

Springing up from his chair, he ushers me into a dimly lit corridor now radiating colour and energy courtesy of a suite of glowing prints by Howard Hodgkin, the grand stone-topped pier tables lining the wall now home to the sculptural monochrome ceramics of Roland Summer. Matthew Hirst, the duke’s curator, has recently discovered that the tables were originally silvered and the duke is of a mind to re-silver them. Not one to shy away from theatricality, he has also sanctioned the regilding of the glazing bars of the windows as well as the trophies and architectural details above them. The once blackened stone walls are being cleaned to reveal the original warm buff, and the effect in the summer sunshine is dazzling. “When it is finished in 2012 it will be very vulgar but very historically correct, and that suits me down to the ground,” says the duke.

Throughout the house – which, unusually, has always been open to the public – the new melds into the old. Against a stone wall at the end of a Persian carpet runner, the vibrant blocks of colour of Sean Scully’s “Wall of Red Day Leaving” look perfectly at home. “A Sounding Line”, a 2007 Edmund de Waal installation of white porcelain pots, complements the palette and rhythms of the chapel corridor.

The taste and approach to collecting of successive owners are reflected in the garden too, which contains pieces by the likes of Elisabeth Frink, Allen Jones, William Turnbull, David Nash and Barry Flanagan. Gary Breeze’s site-specific sundial is the latest arrival, along with Richard Long’s “Cornwall Slate Line”.

“People are so much more relaxed expressing an opinion about contemporary art out of doors – and indoors, as I discovered this year with the opening of the contemporary gallery,” says the duke. “When we look at old art, we tend to behave as though we are in church and are rather in awe of it.” We consider this point while admiring Chatsworth’s Rembrandt. “I have noticed how the noise level increases as visitors get to the contemporary gallery, and it is even louder in the garden. Everyone seems so much more at ease with it.”

He is too self-deprecating to label himself a collector. “We are accumulators. Collecting implies an intellectual rigour, which I am afraid we do not have.” What both the duke and duchess do admit, however, is a passion for contemporary sculpture and ceramics and for a constantly evolving, visually arresting Chatsworth.

Even a house as grand as Chatsworth has its limitations, though. “When we came here, we looked at every space we had in the building and that confirmed what we really already knew, that the storage space we had was not fit for purpose and that there was just not enough of it,” explains the Duke. The solution is the “attic sale”, which has taken the best part of a year and a half to plan with Sotheby’s.

In fact, Chatsworth does not happen to have any attics. The unused and unwanted – everything from quantities of the expected china and glass and coal scuttles to the more recherché, such as 19th-century truncheons, presumably once wielded by the ducal militia – spilled across the corridors, walls and floors of bedrooms, the old theatre, even the sixth duke’s defunct plunge bath.

The real excitement of this sale, however, is the rediscovery of architectural salvage on a grand scale – fixtures and fittings removed from the family’s various residences over the centuries. There is 15th-century Gothic tracery, presumably from Bolton Abbey, plus quantities of William and Mary fire surrounds, doors, doorcases, frames, appliqués and the like that were victims of the constant remodelling at Chatsworth.

Most spectacular of all are the pieces – including most of the library – from Devonshire House, designed by William Kent in the 1730s, a pile that stretched from Green Park to Berkeley Square. Untouched for almost a century in the dusty, atmospheric old granary in the stable block, these have proved a hidden treasure trove. Dismantled and removed before the house was demolished, each chimneypiece had been stored in pieces, practically but unhelpfully classified according to size. The heroine of this tale was Evelyn, ninth duchess, who had each constituent part labelled. Using these labels, inventories and old photographs of the interiors, Sotheby’s experts have heroically pieced together a monumental jigsaw, in effect recreating the interiors of the lost house. The sale is a dream for architectural historians – and a house restorer’s heaven.

The sale items will be on view in marquees at Chatsworth from October 1 to 4, prior to the auction from October 5 to 7