Eleanor Whitmore
Curator & Proprietress
Collects unloved tabletop classics and writes the catalogue cards by hand. Found her first Avalon Hill copy at a Bath jumble sale in 2014 — never quite recovered.
About the cabinet
The curator's account
How the cabinet came to be.
A short, honest account of the three people who run Milly & Willy, the Georgian shopfront in Bath where the bench lives, and why the website doesn't have an algorithm.
Henrietta Mews · Bath
A Bath jumble sale, 2014
Eleanor's first Avalon Hill.
Eleanor Whitmore — Curator & Proprietress — bought a battered first-printing of Acquire at a jumble sale on Walcot Street in 2014. The clock-piece tokens were missing, the rules booklet had a tea-stain, and she paid 50p for the lot. Three years later the cabinet was a small private collection occupying a wall of her sitting-room. By 2017 it had outgrown the sitting-room entirely and a small Georgian shop window on Henrietta Mews became available. The cabinet has been there ever since.
The website was added in 2019 — reluctantly, in Eleanor's telling — when a Glaswegian collector wrote to ask if she would post a copy of 1830: Railways & Robber Barons to the West End. She would. He did. The post-window of the cabinet has remained open since.
Hand-written index card with every parcel · Royal Mail Tracked · 14-day right to cancel.
The three who keep it open
The cabinet's team.
Bertram Quill
Cabinet Keeper
Handles inventory, parcel-wrapping and the unfortunate matter of postage. Has opinions about acid-free tissue paper that he is happy to share at length.
Iris Penrose
Correspondence Secretary
Replies to every letter within the working day. Writes the Monocle Quarterly. Bath natives may know her from the Pulteney Tavern quiz night (she captains).
The shop's habits
A working week at the bench.
- Monday. Inventory walk-through. New entries get a hand-written card.
- Tuesday & Wednesday. The Quarterly piece for the journal is written between despatches.
- Thursday. Eleanor visits a fair or two — Frome, Cheltenham, Wells — looking for the next month's entries.
- Friday. The Curiosities Corner is refreshed in the afternoon.
- Saturday. The Pulteney Tavern quiz, where Iris captains a team of five.
How the cabinet runs
The cabinet's habits.
- Every entry physically passes through the Bath shop before listing.
- Every featured pick is a hand-selection from this week's bench.
- Every parcel ships with a hand-written index card from the curator.
- Every order is answered within the working day by the post-window team.
- Every console carries the cabinet's 12-month working-order warranty.
A small invitation
Step inside the cabinet.
If you're after a specific entry that isn't on the shelves, write to Iris — the request ledger is open at the back counter.