A rare privately printed specimen book describing and illustrating curious mechanical inventions, some in use at the family home Tettenhall Towers, Wolverhampton. Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Thorneycroft, well known for his eccentric way of life, sold off the family ironworks and associated collieries and became a full-time member of the landed gentry, pursing his sporting interests and his well known eccentric inventions. Among the inventions in use at Tettenhall Towers and here described are a fireplace with water driven bellows, boot warming apparatus, a 44 foot waterfall in the theatre end of the hall which also can be illuminated and used to cool the air during a ball, also various patent carriages and reproductions of drawings. The book also contains chapters on Sports and Pastimes, etc. at Tettenhall.
Provenance: Later bookplate of Camfield and Deirdge Wills.