A 1698 copy of Playford's The Dancing Master, signed 'John Stevens, Lutterworth', sold for £3,000 at Gildings in Market Harborough after an attic clear-out.

A book of dance tunes signed by a Lutterworth man in 1698 has sold for £3,000 at auction in Market Harborough. It had been found in a Lutterworth attic, wrapped in a 1937 coronation handkerchief.

The book is an early copy of John Playford’s The Dancing Master. It went under the hammer as lot 35 at Gildings’ Fine Art and Antiques sale on Tuesday 8 September. The auction house’s lot page records it as “Sold for £3,000”. Buyer’s fees are added on top of that. The pre-sale guide was £3,000 to £5,000.

Found in a box in the loft

The sellers live in Lutterworth. They told Gildings the books came to them in the early 1990s from a Lutterworth woman who had been a music teacher.

“We were sorting out some space in the attic and came across a number of books,” they said. The Playford volume was “hidden in a small cardboard box wrapped in a 1937 King George VI coronation handkerchief”.

The key detail is in ink on one title page: “John Stevens, Lutterworth, 1698”. Gildings says that suggests the book was owned in the town more than 300 years ago.

The closed book: a small, worn leather binding, dark brown with cracked and flaking patches, photographed against a white background
The binding, described in the catalogue as calf, broken and much restored. Photo: via Gildings Auctioneers

What the book actually is

Playford was a London music publisher, born in 1623. His first edition, The English Dancing Master, came out in 1651. It was revised again and again as new dances came into fashion, and editions kept coming until 1728.

The dances were “country dances”, a social alternative to the formal French court dances of the time. Couples lined up and moved through patterns to tunes played on the violin or flute.

According to the catalogue entry, the Lutterworth copy binds several parts into one:

  • The Dancing Master, edition unknown, possibly the 9th
  • The Second Part of the Dancing Master, 2nd edition, 1698
  • An Additional Sheet to the Second Part of the Dancing Master
  • Twenty Four New Country Dances, believed printed in 1702 by William Pearson for Playford

It is not a perfect copy. The first title pages and everything up to page 29 are missing, and the binding is described as “broken” and “much restored”.

Why a battered copy still sells

Gildings director Will Gilding explained why so few survive. The manuals were “compact working guides, constantly carried, updated and used by dancing instructors”.

“This battered old book may not look like much at first glance,” he said before the sale. He called it “a fascinating local piece of social history”.

What it means for you

If you are clearing a loft, look inside the boxes before they go to the tip. This book spent three decades in one without anyone knowing what it was.

Gildings is on Great Bowden Road in Market Harborough and runs valuation days for items like this. If you are heading to the tip anyway, check Lutterworth and Market Harborough tip opening times first.

The buyer has not been named, and Gildings has not said whether the book is staying in the area.

Sources