Rotherwas Room

Rotherwas Room

The Rotherwas Room currently resides at the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College.
Building	Mead Art Museum; originally from Rotherwas Court, Herefordshire
Location	Amherst, Massachusetts, US; originally from Herefordshire, England
Named For	Rotherwas Court, Herefordshire
Purpose	gallery/study/event room; originally an English country house parlor

The Rotherwas Room is an English Jacobean-style room currently in the Mead Art Museum, in Amherst College.

It was originally installed in the estate of the Bodenham family called Rotherwas Court, in Herefordshire, England, as part of the country house where the family lived. It was commissioned by Sir Roger Bodenham sometime after 1600, and completed in 1611. Some of the room's most prominent aspects include a carved oak mantelpiece and walnut wall panelling. The room originally functioned as a parlor, where families would dine privately or entertain guests informally.

In 1944, Herbert L. Pratt bequeathed the room to the college. It had been previously installed in his Neo-Jacobean House "The Braes," in Glen Cove, Long Island. Although the wall panelling and the mantelpiece of the original room remain, no specific records of the furniture or the ceiling design of this room in the original Rotherwas Court house have been found.

The name "Rotherwas" first appeared in the Domesday Book commissioned by William the Conqueror in 1086. The entry notes: "Land of Gilbert Son of Thorold. In Dinedor Hundred. Gilbert son of Thurold holds Rotherwas." The land sits near the River Wye in Herefordshire and belonged to the de la Barre family. In the early fifteenth century, John Bodenham of Dewchurch married Isabella de la Barre, heiress of Walter de la Barre. This marriage created an alliance between the two families. Therefore, following the death of Sir Charles de la Barre in 1483, Roger Bodenham, the grandson of John Bodenham, inherited the property. The Bodenham and de la Barre family line continued until 1884, when the last direct descendant, Charles de la Barre Bodenham, died. Even though the Bodenham family members were not the initial lords of the Rotherwas estate, they did control other areas around the River Wye. During the reign of Edward I, Sir John de Bodenham was one of the lords of Monington Stradley in Herefordshire.

In the early seventeenth century, Sir Roger Bodenham, the Bodenham presiding at that time over the Rotherwas estate, commissioned the creation of the Rotherwas Room. The date inscribed on the mantelpiece, 1611, indicates the date of completion. Blount stated in his MSS Collections for Herefordshire, "the house is partly of old tymber work, but an end of it was new built in the last age by Sir Roger." Blount wrote the Herefordshire Manuscripts in 1678 and "last age" indicated approximately three score years and ten earlier. This fact confirms the 1611 date on the fireplace. Additionally, comparisons made to other rooms in houses such as Lyme Halle in Cheshire and Broughton Castle in Oxfordshire, corroborate the inscription and place the room in the early seventeenth century.