Broadwood Art Cased Piano Serial Number 22426 - Year 1889



Friday 7 June 1889

Dowager Lady Harvey, Langley Park, Slough

A No. 15 Grand Pianoforte made to Order in dark oak case with six legs to drawing, A to A, no. 22426 290 guineas, and a set of cups, delivered to Jackwood House, Shooters Hill.



Sir Robert Bateson Harvey, 1st Baronet, of Langley Park (1825-1887), was an English Conservative politician who sat in the House of Commons in two periods between 1863 and 1885.



Harvey was the son of Robert Harvey and his wife Jane Jemima Collins daughter of J R Collins of Hatchcourt Somerset. His father was an illegitimate son of Sir Robert Bateson-Harvey, 1st Bt. (died 1825). Harvey was educated at Eton College and Christ Church, Oxford. He was a Captain in the 5th Buckinghamshire Rifle Volunteers and then in the Royal Buckinghamshire Yeoman Cavalry. He was a J.P. and Deputy Lieutenant for Buckinghamshire. The Langley Park estate in Buckinghamshire was bought by his grandfather in 1788, and passed down to him.



In 1863 Harvey was elected Member of Parliament (MP) for Buckinghamshire and held the seat until 1868. In 1868 he was created a baronet of Langley Park. He was re-elected MP for Buckinghamshire in 1874 and held the seat until 1885.



Harvey married firstly in 1855 Diana Jane Creyke, daughter of Ven. Stephen Creyke Archdeacon of York and secondly in 1874 Magdalene Breadalbane Anderson daughter of Sir John Pringle, 5th Baronet and widow of Alexander Anderson of New South Wales.



According to the records, Sir Robert Bateson Harvey died soon after he had made the plans with his second wife Magdalene Breadalbane Anderson, to have this piano built by John Broadwood and Sons. The piano was finished in 1889 two years after his death. Lady Harvey was then being called the Dowager Lady Harvey when she had the piano delivered. There are several entries showing that because of the death of her husband, it was not unknown for people during this time to move to a different location on the property.





This story helps us understand the amount of work that Broadwood would have put into their Pianos during this time as well. The Lord would have been alive still, so the order had to have taken at least two years to complete.









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