Country Life

Promoting ecological awareness, this practical guide, richly illustrated, details how to achieve real country living and conveys the pleasures and benefits of small-scale, high-quality crop and livestock production. COUNTRY LIFE offers real-life options for people who yearn to be self-sufficient or who simply want a more fulfilling "house in the country". Over 700 illustrations.

An inspirational look at the most iconic interior styles of magnificent English country houses: a thousand years of decorating as told through famous and many never-published photographs, all culled from the incomparable archive of Country Life magazine. This gorgeously illustrated tome is as indispensable as it is beautiful, a rich resource and a visual guide of quintessential British country house style for decorators, architects, designers, and the many armchair travelers who fantasize about revitalizing or re-creating their own castle on the hill. English House Style traces the evolution of sixteen quintessential interior styles found in British homes that have helped lay the foundations for what have become the touchstones for every decorator, designer, and architect working today. Each style, from Gothic and Tudor to Cottage, Arts and Crafts, and Palladian, is represented through lavish photography culled from the rich archive of Country Life, the hugely popular 120-year-old British magazine about life and living in the estates, castles, and cottages that are ubiquitous across the countryside. Also explored are the most influential tastemakers through the centuries, from Horace Walpole and William Morris to Nancy Lancaster and Colefax and Fowler. Decorators across the globe draw from these styles, which are embodied in the most important homes across England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, many of which are featured here, including the magnificent Castle Howard, Chatsworth House, Strawberry Hill, and Hatfield House, along with exquisite hidden gems, such as Wardington Manor, Marchmont House, and Lindisfarne Castle.

How English country folk lived, worked, threshed, thatched, rolled fleece, milled corn, brewed mead, and carried on all the other tasks and trades of daily rural life.

During the reign of Queen Victoria, industrialisation changed every aspect of rural life. Industrial diversification led to a decline in agriculture and mass migration from country to town and city – in 1851 half the population lived in the countryside, but by 1901 only a quarter did so. This book outlines the changes and why they occurred. It paints a picture of country life as it was when Victoria came to the throne and shows how a recognisably modern version of the British countryside had established itself by the end of her reign. Cheap food from overseas meant that Britain was no longer self-sufficient but it freed up money to be spent on other goods: village industries and handcrafts were undercut by the new industrial technology that brought about mass production, and markets were replaced by shops that grew into department stores.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1875.