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By ROISIN GADELRAB
 

Guy Noble with the Venetian well head – a snap at £2,000
Hospital furniture goes up for grabs

UCLH gets ready for grand Middlesex clearance

IT’S a house clearance sale with a difference – 10 lots of antique furnishings ranging from a 14th century Venetian wellhead to 1920s boardroom panelling are up for grabs in a £20,000 hospital sell-off.
Antique collectors seeking a Victorian mahogany desk upon which to scribe their letters or a garden sundial stand will have the chance to make a bid for the pieces – owned by University College London Hospital (UCLH) – as the hospital prepares to sell off its Middlesex Hospital site.
The hospital, in Goodge Street, was put up for sale on Tuesday and is expected to go for at least £100 milllion.
UCLH arts curator Guy Noble said he had personally chosen the items because they were no longer in use, adding: “There’s a Georgian breakfast table, which is not a practical item to have in a modern hospital.”
He said the Venetian well head, dating from around 1380 and valued by independent art experts at £2,000, had been sitting in the grounds with a plant in it. It was donated by grateful patient, a Mrs Ralph Price, in 1913.
He said: “The well head had originally been on a public drinking fountain in Venice. Items like this were brought back by people who had been on grand tours during the Renaissance and wanted souvenirs from their European trips.” But lovers of fine furniture and curios may be disappointed. Under NHS rules, all the items must be offered to hospital employees before the sale is open to the general public. However, Mr Noble says he will welcome interest from non-NHS staff today (Thursday).
He added the hospital’s board had no qualms selling off donated objects.
Mr Noble said: “The idea is to make more money for the UCLH arts project. It’s my job to improve the hospital’s environment through the arts. We don’t have a budget and everything I do is through fundraising. No money is diverted from patient care.”
Not everything on the list will definitely be sold. Certain items, such as a lead Victorian fountain and the boardroom panelling donated by former Middlesex vice president and philanthropist Ed-mund Davies from around 1920, may be thrown in with the site sale.
 
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