Valuations

Insurance valuations were recorded for all the early loan exhibitions but there were no general valuation of the permanent collections until 1969, records for this and two further valuations in 1973 and 1984 are preserved in the Museum archives [mu97, mu98 and mu99]. The furniture valuations for 1969 and the oil and watercolour paintings for 1984 were added by hand to the accession registers [md16, md17]. There were two further valuations in 1999 and 2011.

The 1999 valuation records were not married up with their object numbers and some of the Bonham's descriptions of items of furniture are not easy to match up with the accession register descriptions. In 2011, Bonham's made use of the amuse records, which speeded up the valuation process and resulted in a reduction in the price of their work. Bonham's report included Towneley's object numbers and no record of the valuation was added to Modes in order to limit access to the valuations.

One outcome of the valuation in 1969 was the resulting inventory highlighted paintings that had never been added to the permanent collection register as can be seen from there subsequent entry to that register in February 1969. This included two important oil paintings purchased with money from the Massey bequest in 1947 [paoil213 and paoil214]. A similar outcome occurred in 2011 with 18 entries being added to Modes for the furniture collection (fuan262-fuan279) after Bonham's undertook their inventory.