Sotheby’s announced on Friday that it will be auctioning a chunk of the contents of Easton Neston, an 18th century country house in Northamptonshire (the house was built around 1700, but the Fernor-Hesketh family have been camped out there since 1535ish). Among the assorted dusty trinkets that always litter poncey homesteads like this—Japanese laquerwork, porcelains of various sizes and degrees of floridity, googly silver candlesticks, etc.—the sale will also include several Ol’ Master paintings collected by the Fernor-Heskeths of the 18th and 19th century, like a few Jan van Goyens, Pieter de Bloots, and some portraits by Robert Peak, Sir Godfrey Kneller, and Sir Joshua Reynolds.

There’s also some assorted Chinoiserie that Sir Tom Hesketh collected during his flirtation with the orient while on a world tour in 1879.

The sale, which will take three days to work through 1,500 objects (which, incidentally, is about a quarter of the entire collection), begins on May 17, 2005. Pencil it in if you’re in the neighbourhood and have £40,000 burning a hole in your pocket.

SOTHEBY’S TO SELL COLLECTION OF WORKS OF ART FROM EASTON NESTON