The recent sale of an old corkscrew, estimated at £400-£600, at an auction in Colchester for £48,000 is a story itself, but the back story is equally fascinating. The corkscrew was auctioned by Reeman Dansie whose catalogue stated that the springs were engraved, 'Made from the Iron Shoe that was taken from a pillar. That was 656 Years in the Foundation of Old London Bridge, by J. Ovenston, 72 Gt. Titchfield St., London'.
 
The Antiques Trade Gazette story about the corkscrew stated that Ovenston was an ancestor of the vendor who sold relics fashioned from oak and iron fragments of London Bridge salvaged from its demolition in 1831, and whose other London Bridge lots included oak nutcrackers which sold for £456, a jewellery box £78, a pair of boot pulls £60, and some snuff boxes, all catalogued as William IV.
 
According to the 1865 book, Walks and Talks About London by Timbs, the prime warden's chair at Fishmongers Hall, bears a similar inscription, and was also made by John Ovenston, again undated. Curiously Wikipedia now states that the chair was made from black bean wood, an entirely different material, unless the London Bridge chair is no longer.
 
Old London bridge was built by a penitent Henry II to atone for the murder of Thomas Becket in 1170, and had a chapel to Becket in its centre which was accessible to fishermen and ferrymen from the river. In 1799 a comptetition was held for a design for its replacement and in 1824 a replacement was built by Sir Edward Banks to designs by John Rennie 100 feet west of old London Bridge using Mertsham stone from a Surrey quarry owned by the Reverend William Jolliffe. The new London Bridge was itself dismantled in 1967 and the stone reclaimed and sold to Lake Havasu City in 1967 - one of the world's great reclamation stories.
 
The stone from old London Bridge was salvaged for reuse by Banks, and a contemporary illustration shows the use of a derrick mounted hand-winched crane to lift the iron-footed oak piles used to create 'starlings' to protect the bridge's abutments. Whether they dated to 1176 is debatable, but it was these which banks saved and Ovenston eventually acquired.
 
Edward Banks firm, Jolliffe & Banks, dismantled old London Bridge in 1831. At the same time John Ovenston took up his father Thomas Overton of Leith's trade as upholsterer and cabinetmaker, as well as acting as agent for shipping lines and for the sale of property, moving to 72 Great Titchfield Street, London. In 1831 he advertised a villa to let on the banks of the Thames at Richmond. His connections with the new well-to-do, and it would seem Scots, in London resulted in him finding both property and domestic staff.
 
Banks died in 1835 and his son Delamark Banks rebuilt the family's Kent home, Warden Court, and nearby Warden Church reusing stones salvaged from old London Bridge, stones being inscribed 'London Bridge 1176-1832'. Locals still believe that there is evidence of more reuse of old stones from London Bridge dotted around the Isle of Sheppey.
 
Between 1835 and 1845 Ovenston appeared to continue to extend his social network, arranging auctions and apparently 'arranging' furniture and selling paintings. He also used his funds to assist distressed bankrupts by guaranteeing stock so they could continue trading, and one of these, William Bond in 1846 was to prove his downfall, together with his co-assignee, a merchant by the name of John Crewer of St Mary Axe.
 
The same year Ovenston began advertising extensively in newspapers the supply of a German medicine called 'The Essence of Life' for which he had acquired sole rights in Britain from Dr Kiesow, son of a valet to Stanislav I of Poland. And he also advertised and acted as agent for the auction sale of the estate of Delamark Banks Esq which included 'curiousities from the foundations of London Bridge and other places'. So could John Ovenston's London Bridge trinkets have originated after this date? There is nothing to say that say of them were positively made before 1846.
 
In 1847 disaster struck. William Bond defaulted on payment of £150 for supply of wine by Mr G. Crawley of Mark Lane, and so Crawley demanded the money from Ovenston and his co-assignee Crewer, who decided he could not pay, saddling Ovenston with the whole debt. Ovenston's was in financial trouble. His ads for the Essence Of Life had quadruple in June and July, and he had written to his patrons suggesting they might like to purchase London Bridge trinkets to help him out of a financial quagmire. He no longer traded from Great Titchfield Street but at his sisters' house in nearby Charlotte Street.
 
In August the ads stopped completely and Crawley placed an execution on Ovenston resulting in the sale of his furniture. On Saturday afternoon of 14th August 1847 Ovenston called on Crawley who was out and had his clerk fetch him to the house as he had something important to say. "What do you mean by doing what you have done," he raged at Crawley when he arrived. At which point Ovenston shot him in the head at close range with one of two small pistols he had with him. Crawley ran out of the house shouting murder, and Ovenston stepped into Crawley's office, shut the door and shot himself in the head.
 
Both men were expected to die, but strangely the both survived. The ball went through Crawley's cheek and shot away the roof of his mouth from where it was removed by a surgeon. And Ovenston shot himself through the mouth and the ball went up through his brain and lodged near the surface of the left temple, from where it too was removed by a surgeon. He survived but his mental condition was not good.
 
Ovenston had written letters to his sisters explaining what he proposed to do and how he was tired of life due to his financial difficulties. 'Death', he wrote, 'is far more preferable than the disgraceful situation this villain Crawley has placed me in.' The court case was well reported and the outcome was that he was controversially found not guilty on the grounds of insanity and detained on her Majesty's pleasure.
 
Character witnesses for Ovenston included William Tite, the architect, who had known Ovenston for 20 years and had just completed London's Pantheon-inspired Royal Exchange, and Sir John Easthope, a speculator who made a fortune and bought the Morning Chronicle, known as 'Blast-hope' by Charles Dickens who, when working for him, tried to organise a strike to better journalists working conditions.
 
Nothing seems known of John Ovenston after his trial and confinement, although it appears that a man with the right name of the correct age died in a Lunatic Asylum in Scotland in 1865. John Ovenston was born in Leith, Edinburgh.