The 1947 sale was house clearance on a massive scale! ‘The Estate of the Hon. Mrs. Esme Smyth deceased. Ashton Court Somerset.’ The auctioneers were the local company of John E. Pritchard &Co. which had offices at 82 Queens Road Bristol 8. A comprehensive catalogue was produced and the sale took place over 8 days in June 1947. (3rd- 6th and 10th - 13th of June). The preview was held between the 28th and 31st of May. Admission to the sale was by the catalogue which cost 2 shillings and 6 pence, or 5 shillings for the illustrated version. Books, linen and soft goods were sold first, followed over the next 3 days by the contents of the various rooms. Bric-a-brac, china and glass followed, then paintings, tapestries and engravings. The last three days of the sale were the contents of the upstairs bedrooms, silver, plated goods and jewellery, and finally the servants’ bedroom contents, domestic offices and outdoor effects. The contents were varied and often on a large scale. One lot was 16 damask table cloths, and another 18 pairs of lace curtains. Lot 620 was a full Chamberlain’s Worcester china dinner service of 88 pieces, in red and green ground, decorated in the Oriental style and bearing the Smyth coat of arms, lot 621 a supper set of 23 pieces to match, and lot 622 a similar matching dessert service of 21 pieces. The size of the carpets reflected the size and function of the spaces: the Long corridor - 25 yards of bordered Axminster 4 feet wide; the Main Staircase and Upper corridor - 4 pieces of Axminster measuring in total just over 30 yards; the servant’s quarter passage - 33 yards of buff druggett 36 inches wide [a druggett was a coarse woven fabric used to make floor coverings]. Sometimes the contents reflected the size and function of the rooms where they had been housed: a full size billiard table in a mahogany frame by Burroughs & Watts with accessories and a ‘massive three-manual organ’. Other lots were small, for instance, in the Winter Garden was lot 810 three pottery dwarfs and a rabbit. The Western Daily Press reported on every day of the sale. On Wednesday 4th of June 1947 they reported that engravings, drawings and papers which were collected and arranged by W. Frank Elliott of Taunton in 1853 for Collinson’s History of Somerset had brought the highest price of the morning at £200. An old Sevres dessert service from the Empire period comprising 86 pieces was sold for £600 which was the highest price realised so far in the sale when they reported on Friday the 6th of June. On Wednesday the 11th of June they reported that the Bristol Art Gallery had acquired for £37 four of the Smyth family portraits. They remarked ‘high bidding at yesterday’s sale at Ashton Court, above the limits laid down, prevented a larger number being bought …’. On Thursday the 12th of June they reported that an Axminster carpet had been sold for £270 and that other carpets, fine mahogany furniture, curtains and engravings and other bedroom furnishings had ‘aroused brisk bidding, especially from women …’. Esme Smyth left total effects valued at just over £1.4m which was a considerable sum in 1947. The proceeds from the 1947 contents auction sale represented only a small proportion of her estate. The total effects included proceeds from the 1946 sale of the Ness Castle Estate, the Smyth Arms and the Angel Inn sold for £42,000 in March 1948, and Gatcombe Court sold in November 1948. Bristol City Council purchased the Ashton Court Estate in 1959 for £103,200 this included ‘825 acres, Ashton Court, various lodges, cottages, an estate yard, and farm buildings incorporated within the boundaries’, but excluded 17 acres already purchased for educational purposes.