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“To be let loose in the wardrobe rooms, the gold vaults, the muniment room and the closets, cupboards and attics of Chatsworth — a place I came to as a little boy with a ticket in my hand and wonder in my eyes — has been a truly joyous experience,” Mr. Bowles said recently in a telephone call from the stately home.

In Bath, De Quincey was deeply affected by the unusual story of Thomas Chatterton, a teen-age poet from nearby Bristol who had found dusty medieval documents in the muniment room of his parish church and, his imagination ignited, invented the figure of Thomas Rowley, a fifteenth-century blind monk and poet.

And by and by, had a key made and strayed into the Muniment Room!

The Muniment Room is over this lobby on the first floor.

He had examined the muniment room and found part of the wall broken down, and in the room two boxes of papers which had been taken from a recess which the breach had disclosed.