An elaborately carved oak dressing table from Christina Rossetti's room in the tower at Penkill Castle, South Ayrshire, Scotland. The dressing table is composed of a Scottish 18th century side table with additions and embellishments, stained to match, including swing mirror within a shaped veneered frame, supported by large carved volutes, above a three drawer base, attached to a serpentine base with single full-length drawer, front with carved acanthus leaves, cabriole supports leading to hoof feet united by stretchers, one drawer containing a few ephemeral items relating to Penkill Castle, including a penciled recipe for dark oak stain on the back of an envelope addressed to Henry Mayhew Esq, an empty box for a powder prescribed to W.B. Scott, and an empty visiting card envelope printed Miss Boyd, Penkill. Penkill Castle was built c. 1490. The first of the Boyds of Penkill was Adam Boyd, third son of Alexander, third Lord Boyd, who first took occupancy of the castle shortly after his marriage in about 1532. The 13th laird of Penkill, Spencer Boyd, restored the Castle with funds from his grandfather William Losh, and lived there from 1858 until his death in 1865. He left Penkill to his sister Alice. Alice Boyd bequeathed Penkill in 1897 to her niece Miss Eleanor Margaret Courtney-Boyd who bequeathed it in 1946 to her niece Miss Evelyn May Courtney-Boyd. Miss Evelyn May Courtney was a dancing mistress in Eastbourne who added Boyd to her name in order to inherit. She sold the castle in 1978. An article in the Times entitled, Art Lovers Plead for Rescue of Castle Treasures, stated: In this condition none of the art treasures will last very long … Evelyn May Courtney-Boyd, a distant relative of Alice Boyd … now 84... She was described by friends as a strange, impulsive, but generous woman, with no head for money, who continually found herself in debt over her fuel bills, rates, and the like. The kindly Miss Courtney Boyd almost certainly suffered from dementia in her later years and had been taken advantage of by many: her local milk man, a southern predator who had already played the same game on another spinster in London and various Scottish antiques dealers. Of all those interlopers, it was the milk laird, as the Sunday Times referred to Willie Hume, the local milkman, and his apparent tangle with the alleged curse of Penkill who finally precipitated the sale of the castle. The curse, as talked about in the local village pubs, which dooms to certain death anyone who dares bring harm to Penkill, appeared in Alice Boyd's diary, written in the 1860s: how, when she opened a window one morning, she noticed a stranger impaled on a tree branch in the glen below; apparently this would be burglar had fallen prey to the curse and slipped from the castle wall. Willie Hume, the milk laird, also suffered a similar fate, having long delivered Courtney-Boyd's meagre dairy requirements, suggested that he would be delighted to furnish her with a hot meal each evening if he and his wife could occupy the empty gatehouse. Living alone and apparently lonely in the twenty-five room castle, Miss Boyd quickly accepted the milkman's offer. At some time after his move to the gatehouse the milkman suggested to the laird that if she appreciated his presence she would permit him to purchase the gatehouse in order to ensure herself continued company. He then purchased the dwelling for a nominal sum, and soon made a more brazen request: he asked permission to move with his wife into the castle. Soon paintings from the Penkill collections began to appear in Scotland's auction rooms, and one evening while the milkman and a Glasgow antiques dealer were visiting the castle's Rossetti Room the curse appeared once more. In this room hung a painting by William Bell Scott portraying the fourteenth and fifteenth lairds, Spencer and Alice Boyd, overlooking the sea on one of Penkill's towers. The painting was securely fastened to a fireplace over-mantel and carries in faint gold leaf the inscription: Move not this picture, Let it be, For love of those in effigy. The antiques dealer is reported to have expressed an interest in the painting but, having noticed the warning and being aware of the castle's curse, decided to pass on the purchase.The milkman, however, who was attempting to pry the painting from the over-mantel with a poker, began choking and fell to the floor. He died that night of angina. Shortly thereafter his widow and the now largely dependent seventeenth laird left the castle abruptly and with few possessions. She inherited the proceeds of the castle's sale in 1978 with which she purchased a pub that failed, and ended as a cleaning lady in a hospital near Perth in Scotland.
Alice Boyd, Penkill Castle, South Ayrshire c. 1840; by descent in the family to: Miss Evelyn May Courtney-Boyd, Penkill Castle; to c. 1972 Private collection to 2016