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The country house was a focal point of Georgian architecture, landscape, and society.This well illustrated book takes this distinctive architectural form and uses it as a fulcrum for an exploration of the cultural map of the period.A full discussion of the architecture and planning of the country house is followed by an exploration of the literature on the country house, including both contemporary guidebooks and the writings of authors such as Jane Austen; how the house worked as a social and economic unit, and the landscaping of the country house. ... Read more

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In this lavishly illustrated book, Christopher Christie explores the British country house during the period 1700-1830 and looks at the lives of both the noblemen and the servants who inhabited them. Christie's clear and thoughtful analysis provides insight into many different areas: the role and rank of family and servants, furniture, landscape, architecture, painting, sculpture, style, food, and entertainment.
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For millions of people in the English-speaking world, the now standard image of the British country house is Brideshead Castle in Wiltshire: the domed and doomed baroque country seat of the Marchmain family seen in the BBC adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's novel, Brideshead Revisited. In real life, the house used for the television series is Castle Howard, one of the largest and most opulent private homes in England, located on 10,000 acres of gardens, parkland, and woods in North Yorkshire, now visited by more than 200,000 tourists a year.

Between 3,500 and 4,000 country houses--large, often elegantly furnished and surrounded by extensive estates--remain more or less intact in England today, although frequently converted to non-residential uses. Whether in public or private hands, the best known of them have become a major magnet for British and foreign tourists, attracting about 20 million paying visitors each year. Country houses, with their furnishings and landscaped settings, have been called England's one important contribution to art history. They figure prominently in the ongoing debate over how much of any "National Heritage" is worth preserving.

In The Fate of the English Country House, David Littlejohn describes the past glories and troubled present condition of "the stately homes of England," both those that continue to serve as private houses, and those that have been turned into museums, tourist attractions, convention centers, hotels, country clubs, schools, apartments, hospitals, even prisons. By means of extensive conversations with their owners and managers (the book contains more than 50 photographs of the houses), the author takes us on a private tour of these remarkable places and evaluates the many proposals that have been put forward for their survival.

In the opening chapter we meet three near-neighbors in Oxfordshire, whose personal accounts introduce many of the themes of the book: the 11th Duke of Marlborough, whose family has been living at Blenheim Palace since 1710; the 21st Baron Saye and Sele, whose ancestors built romantic, moated Broughton Castle between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries; and the Honorable Ann Harcourt, mistress of Stanton Harcourt Manor, which has belonged to her family since the twelfth century.

Most of the conversations revolve around the financial, legal, and strategic problems of owning and running an immense, archaic estate, designed for an age of unquestioned privilege, grandiose entertaining, and an almost unlimited pool of servants: a time before income, capital gains, or inheritance taxes had to be taken into account, before one had to open one's gates to the hordes of touristsout "Doing the Statelies" between Easter Sunday and the end of October. Littlejohn finds that as government support for privately owned historic houses dries up, more and more of them are being converted to other uses, or left empty to decay, their paintings and furnishings sent to the auction houses to help pay tax and repair bills.

As they grow more and more difficult to justify or maintain, English country houses have become increasingly "endangered species" in today's alien economic and political climate. What is at stake is a major piece of England's architectural and cultural heritage, no easier to defend than superannuated ocean liners or great Victorian hotels. The Fate of the English Country House addresses the immediate future of these homes and allows readers to contemplate the history of great houses that have, in some cases, been owned and occupied by the same families for 200, 400, 600, or even 900 years. ... Read more

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Building or rebuilding their houses was one of the main concerns of the English nobility and gentry, some might say their greatest achievement. This is the first book to look at the building of country houses as a whole. Creating Paradise shows why owners embarked on building programmes, often following the Grand Tour or excursions around other houses in England; where they looked for architectural inspiration and assistance; and how the building work was actually done. It deals not only with great houses, including Holkham and Castle Howard, but also the diversity of smaller ones, such as Felbrigg and Dyrham, and shows the cost not only of building but of decorating and furnishing houses and of making their gardens. Creating Paradise is an important and original contribution to its subject and a highly readable account of the attitude of the English ruling class to its most important possession.
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This unique study shows how the aristocracy and gentry provided their houses with places of worship after the upheavals of the Reformation. Dr Ricketts makes illuminating discoveries, explodes deeply-rooted misconceptions, and shows how, by the end of the 17th century, and after many false starts, a new and more enduring form of private Protestant chapel had evolved as a fundamental part of the English country house. Before her untimely death in 2003, the architectural historian Annabel Ricketts had made the study of the 16th- and 17th-century private chapel her own. Under the editorship of her husband, Simon Ricketts, academic friends and colleagues have helped adapt her doctoral thesis for a wider readership without diluting its scholarly value. The study ranges across a number of disciplines - social, ecclesiastical, decorative, and architectural - and adds greatly to the understanding of the English country house. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

If you like little known country houses - you will like this
Great book...lots of details on famous and obscure country houses in Gloucestershire and a bit about the building of the houses and their families...I got Vol II., 1660-1830, would love to get my hands on Vol. I1500-1660.Mr. Kingsley is very detailed and features several houses thathave been destroyed, which is sad, but nice that he included them. Wouldhave liked to seen more pictures and more about the families andproperties, however, I feel we see only a tip of Mr. Kingsley'siceberg...but it is a FINE book if you like this sort of thing. ... Read more

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This new illustrated paperback edition examines the Scottish country house in all its guises -from great classical houses like Hopetoun, to familiar castles such as Glamis and Craigievar - as well as giving insights into the architects who designed them, including William and Robert Adam, Sir John James Burnet and Sir William Bruce. ... Read more

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A splendid illustrated history of the myth and reality of English cottage life over the last seven centuries, with 240 photographs, paintings, and drawings. Now in paperback. Whether Cotswold stone or a harmonious blend of timber-frame and thatch, the English cottage is an enduringly romantic symbol of country life at its most seductive. The ideal of cottage life is one that has tempted writers and artists for the last 200 years, but as this volume reveals, it was not always idyllic. From the medieval village to the 20th century, architectural historian Adrian Tinniswood traces the history of the cottage, exploring how they came to be built, the materials used to build them, and how they evolved. The focus of the book, however, is firmly on people: how cottage dwellers spent their time, what they ate and where they slept, and how they decorated and furnished their homes. A lively portrait, richly presented with 240 illustrations. Adrian Tinniswood is the author of Historic Houses of the National Trust and Country Houses from the Air. 216 pp 9 x 10 1/2 120 color & 120 b/w illustrations ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Thought Provoking
What a book! I wish I had been taught history like it teaches when I was in school.It is very engaging and I felt intrigued by the pictures.It is a very appealing book for a person who loves England and history and something about it made me feel like I should go outside and pick herbs and make potions . . . (not sure why). ... Read more

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In 1936, James Lees-Milne became Country Houses secretary of the infant National Trust. Already fired with compassion for ancient architecture, 'so vulnerable and transient', he could now pursue what amounted to a vocation. His arrival increased the Trust's permanent staff to four, a close-knit community, somewhat cramped in a stuffy office facing a shunting yard in Victoria. The Trust at that time owned only two country houses, one ruined and the other empty, but changing conditions, accelerated by the War, now brought a stream of offers. James Lees-Milne's chief task was to visit, as ambassador and aesthetic assessor, would-be donors in their domains. So young a man arriving often on a bicycle must have astonished those patrician figures, who themselves might be survivors from the Victorian age. Nor was his task easy: it involved legal thickets, intricate family squabbles, dilemmas of artistic judgement, and owners who, in their fastnesses, might have grown very eccentric indeed. In this book James Lees-Milne describes fourteen houses, including Knole, Blickling, Stourhead and Cotehele.He brings the buildings, their owners and pasts brilliantly to life and tells the sometimes cliffhanging tales of their transfer to the Trust. Readers of the celebrated diaries will not be surprised by the wit and charm in these pages. But everyone, whether the author's devoted following or visitors to the Trust's great houses, will be enchanted by the extraordinary, amusing and touching picture they will find here of an England now lost. ... Read more

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Photographer Thomas Harding, armed only with his pinhole camera and a keen eye for the unusual, traveled thousands of miles of backroads and lanes to record the remnants of a vanishing genre of folk architecture--the outhouse. Harding boldly stepped where others might fear to tread. He followed the elusive drain from the Bible (Deuteronomy 23:12-13), to the Romans (indoor facilities over streams of water), to the lowly rural American outhouse. The intrepid Harding traced a little-known pipe-dream .... ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A real gem
I found this book quite by accident several months ago, and since then have given over ten as gifts. I never thought I'd like a book about outhouses, but this one is a real gem. The photos are very creative andevocative: Thomas Harding knows his stuff, as his years with the BachrachPhotographers can attest to. He's paired these lovely photos (ofnot-so-lovely subjects) with quotes from great literature, pulled out ofcontext in the most hilarious ways. My favorite one is a picture of a"two-holer" paired with a classic Edmund Waller quote: "Myjoy, my grief, my love,/Did all within this circle move!" Give thisbook a chance, you'll be glad you did. ... Read more

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Brilliantly written essays on the aesthetic principles and enduring motives of architecture. A classic of architectural history and theory, Heavenly Mansions interprets architecture as a reflection of the age in which it flowers, and traces the alternating themes of fantasy and functionalism as exemplified in various styles and in the works of a number of influential men, including Wren, Viollet-le-Duc, William Butterfield, and Le Corbusier. Succinctly summarizing 800 years of viewpoints about architecture, it ranges from Gothic architecture to the Renaissance to the influence of modern abstract art on twentieth-century architecture. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Summerson: Heavenly.
Certain architectural writers are a pleasure to read. John Summerson is one of them, approaching "la creme de la creme."Few can match him in terms of erudition, clarity of expressed thought, and sheer elegance of language.I think all students - after their first basic history courses - ought to read the following chapters:

"Heavenly Mansions: an Interpretation of Gothic"
"Viollet-le-Duc and the Rational Point of View"
"Architecture, Painting, and Le Corbusier"
"The Mischevious Analogy"

The other chapters are also all good, but the above will probably be the most interesting to those concerned with the development of modern architectural theory, giving an interested mind as much to think about as Complexity and Contradiction or Learning from Las Vegas (perhaps more than both combined). ... Read more