Adopt an artefact – Lord and Lady Eversfield

Christmas is creeping up closer every day – so how about something a bit different for a festive present?

Horsham Museum & Art Gallery has an interesting idea – why not adopt a museum artefact? There are a dozen to choose from.

The money raised helps fund important projects at the museum, such as the conservation of our collection and the purchase of important objects. You can set the adoption up to give as a present for someone else.

All the details can be found on our Adopt an Object web page.

This week we look at the portrait of Lord and Lady Eversfield. You can’t miss it, it’s at the top of the stairs on the first floor in the Museum dominating the wall!

It features Eversfield (1683-1749) and his first wife Mary (née Dunscombe) who lived at Denne Park in Horsham.

Charles Eversfield was an MP for Horsham from the age of 21 and for the next 36 years. During this period Horsham was known as a ‘rotten borough’ due to powerful members of the community influencing the few landowners in Horsham who were eligible to vote.

Charles Eversfield’s first wife died in 1714 and he would remarry Henrietta Maria Lady Jenkinson in 1731. A visitor to Denne Park in 1724 described the portrait which confirms that it is of Charles’ first wife Mary.

The portrait artist is not known, as it appears that the painting has been cut down, which would have removed the signature.

The portrait remained at Denne Park until just after the end of the second world war, when the last of the family there passed away.

It was bought by Horsham Museum Society in 1948 following a fundraising campaign.