A Cabinet of Curiosities was a collection of objects, both natural and man made. It would include artifacts of geology, anthropology, ethnography and archaeology, together with religious and historical relics and works of art. These collections were assembled by scholars, travellers, aristocrats or merchants from the sixteenth century onwards. In fact these cabinets sometimes formed the seeds from which whole museums have grown.
One such, and possibly the greatest of its kind was that belonging to the celebrated and most learned Dr John Dee. At the height of his powers, he was renowned as a man of great learning and mystic ability. He knew all the skilled adepts and scholars of his time, entertaining many of them at his great house in Mortlake in Surrey.
His Cabinet of Curiosities was a vast and magnificent construction of rare woods, joined with the most cunning metal and ivory fitments. It stood some fifteen foot high, by thirty in width. None but Dr Dee himself knew the depth or number of the drawers, cupboards, or compartments it contained. It was said that his great cabinet held not just the mysteries of his age, but of time itself, and contained not just what had been, but what could, or might be in the future. John Dee died in Mortlake late in 1609 aged 82, there are no records of his death in the parish register, nor has the great man’s gravestone ever been found.
As to his fabled Cabinet of Curiosities, there is no record of its sale, or even its disposal, although shortly before his death one of his students, a man called Hugh Sycamore, left Mortlake and moved to Somerset, where he obtained a position of ‘clerk’ to Sir Henry Babbinger, who was himself regarded as a mystic and adept. It was about this time that Sir Henry’s home, Broughton Hall, was greatly enlarged — a whole new wing being added to the ancient manor house.
Sir Henry died in 1649 aged 86, and his estate passed to his son Neville, who was killed fighting for the royalists, at the battle of Worcester in 1651. Records show that his son William inherited the estate and lived to 1710. At his death, his will showed he left the house and all in it to Hugh Sycamore, described as “a faithful servant and steward of the family”.
There is no record of any Hugh Sycamore being born in that parish from 1604 to 1750, nor any records of any marriage or death. However on a boundary map of 1801, the old hall is shown as Sycamore Hall, by which name it is known to this day.