The Country House Explained

England's country houses have never been more popular with visitors. Most are packed with masterpieces of art and antiques, and they have vast landscaped gardens, often with lakes and fountains. They reflect all the splendour of England's glory years. Trevor Yorke, using original drawings, diagrams and photographs, takes the reader on a careful tour of the country house and describes its features, exterior and interior, upstairs and downstairs. He looks at the different periods of large country houses from the mid 1500s up to 1914, explaining the changing architectural styles. He describes the different rooms within the main house and their changing roles over the centuries. There is a glossary of architectural terms, and a quick reference time chart listing country house architects and the notable buildings they designed, with drawings of the period details that help to date them.

Thousands of people visit country houses every years and spend a few pounds on a visitor's guide, but what if you want a more general guide to English houses as a whole. The Country House Explained is just such a book. With lots of photographs and sketches Trevor Yorke looks at the exteriors, interiors, gardens and parks of English country houses

The fascinating story of the evolution of the country house in Britain, from its Roman precursors to the present The Story of the Country House is an authoritative and vivid account of the British country house, exploring how they have evolved with the changing political and economic landscape. Clive Aslet reveals the captivating stories behind individual houses, their architects, and occupants, and paints a vivid picture of the wider context in which the country house in Britain flourished and subsequently fell into decline before enjoying a renaissance in the twenty-first century. The genesis, style, and purpose of architectural masterpieces such as Hardwick Hall, Hatfield House, and Chatsworth are explored, alongside the numerous country houses lost to war and economic decline. We also meet a cavalcade of characters, owners with all their dynastic obsessions and diverse sources of wealth, and architects such as Inigo Jones, Sir John Vanbrugh, Robert Adam, Sir John Soane and A.W.N. Pugin, who dazzled or in some cases outraged their contemporaries. The Story of the Country House takes a fresh look at this enduringly popular building type, exploring why it continues to hold such fascination for us today.

Based on the author's Slade lectures given at Oxford University in 1975-76.

A study of Britain's great nineteenth-century houses examines their architects, and the social, technological, and economic conditions that made the massive structures possible

The brilliantly restored St. Giles House, in the idyllic Dorset countryside, offers high-point Georgian architecture and interiors that bridge many historical styles. The 12th Earl of Shaftesbury, 39-year-old Nicholas Ashley-Cooper, invites the reader into the house that his family has called home since the fifteenth century. In recent years, his award-winning restoration has brought the house back to life, transforming exquisite spaces that honor the past while being suited to twenty-first-century living. English country-house splendor, through the hands of some of the world’s top artisans and craftspeople, returns to the house in the form of re-created wallpapers, customized paints, revived furniture from the Georgian and Victorian periods, reworked antique Brussels tapestries, restored plasterwork and textiles, and a complete overhaul of the landscape, with its sunken garden, woodlands, avenue of beeches, lake, and shell-encrusted grotto. With stories of noteworthy architecture, beautiful interiors, and centuriesof a single family’s involvement in British and world history, this book will appeal to devotees of country living, the aristocratic life, historic houses, and English interior design.

From an acclaimed social and architectural historian, the tumultuous, scandalous, glitzy, and glamorous history of English country houses and high society during the interwar period As WWI drew to a close, change reverberated through the halls of England's country homes. As the sun set slowly on the British Empire, the shadows lengthened on the lawns of a thousand stately homes. In The Long Weekend, historian Adrian Tinniswood introduces us to the tumultuous, scandalous and glamorous history of English country houses during the years between World Wars. As estate taxes and other challenges forced many of these venerable houses onto the market, new sectors of British and American society were seduced by the dream of owning a home in the English countryside. Drawing on thousands of memoirs, letters, and diaries, as well as the eye-witness testimonies of belted earls and bibulous butlers, Tinniswood brings the stately homes of England to life as never before, opening the door to a world by turns opulent and ordinary, noble and vicious, and forever wrapped in myth. We are drawn into the intrigues of legendary families such as the Astors, the Churchills and the Devonshires as they hosted hunting parties and balls that attracted the likes of Charlie Chaplin, T.E. Lawrence, and royals such as Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson. We waltz through aristocratic soiré, and watch as the upper crust struggle to fend off rising taxes and underbred outsiders, property speculators and poultry farmers. We gain insight into the guilt and the gingerbread, and see how the image of the country house was carefully protected by its occupants above and below stairs. Through the glitz of estate parties, the social tensions between old money and new, the hunting parties, illicit trysts, and grand feasts, Tinniswood offers a glimpse behind the veil of these great estates -- and reveals a reality much more riveting than the dream.

English novelist and playwright John Galsworthy was one of the most acclaimed writers of his time, and his fan base has continued to expand in the years since his death as new generations of readers discover his work. The Country House touches on many same themes that Galsworthy's best-known works explore, including the tribulations facing a new class of landed gentry in nineteenth-century England.