I emailed Liz and asked her what Pantechnicon meant although I wasn't really very close on the spelling. The context was the clincher, though, and here's her answer:

...anyway "pantechnicon" is not in common usage, so I checked it in the dictionary to be on the safe side. Originally, it was a building in London (don't know when - possibly Victorian) for the sale of all kinds of artwork. Eventually it got turned into a furniture store. The word pantechnicon - more properly, pantechnicon-van - came to mean a van for moving furniture/doing removals. Can also mean a collection of miscellaneous objects.

Incidentally, the only other place I've ever heard it used is at the end of 101 Dalmatians (the actual book, not the good Disney animation, or the crappy live action film), when the Dearly's hire one to move all the Dalmatians out of London to Hill Hall.

Return