A History of English Country Houses

Table Of Content

• What is the difference between a Palace and a Castle?
• Look Inside an English Country Home That Elegantly Blends Tudor and Jacobean Features
• Popular searches
• ENGLISH MANSIONS AND COUNTRY HOUSES
• London Marathon 2024: Women's results
• Warwickshire
• Cannon Hall Manor House & Farm – Cawthorne Yorkshire
• Andrew’s day trip exploring the architecture of Bath

A fast-talking caffeine-dependent wordsmith, Marcy has never been one to shy away from sharing a good story or two. If she’s not in a quiet coffee shop somewhere, she enjoys spending afternoons in a museum or art gallery — whether it’s around Metro Manila or a foreign city she’s visiting. She wishes to retire in a winter village someday, so she can fulfil her lifelong dream of wearing turtlenecks all year round and owning a pet penguin. After the war, with many dead and plenty of positions vacant, many of these staff chose to work in the city instead. Max Rollitt, Edward Hurst and Ben Pentreath lead a younger generation who are adding strong colour into the mix, and creating rooms with a more graphic, architectural feel. Buying and selling antiques is how Robert Kime began his decorating career, and is a well-trodden path for many working in a style of which antiques are such a key element.

What is the difference between a Palace and a Castle?

The French Colonial house style can be seen around the world and has significant variety among its sub-styles. The elliptical fanlights and paladin windows are key distinguishing features from Georgian-style homes. Most Dutch Colonial homes you find today are actually from the Colonial Revival period of the early 20th Century. Original Dutch Colonial homes feature flared roof eaves and creative wood and brickwork. They are much more ornamental than classic Colonial homes, though the Dutch Colonial Revival style tends to be more subdued than the original Dutch Colonial homes.

Look Inside an English Country Home That Elegantly Blends Tudor and Jacobean Features

Known as St. Catherine’s Court, the home’s oldest section dates back to the 15th century, with subsequent additions in the 1600s and early 1900s. The home was unfurnished save for a piano and curtains in the library when they purchased it, presenting a rather daunting task. Sir Seton Wills was selling some of the Elizabethan furniture collection from his Grade I–listed country house, Littlecote, and helped the couple pick out what would work for them.

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English Country House Style: 7 of the Most Charming Examples From the AD Archive - Architectural Digest

English Country House Style: 7 of the Most Charming Examples From the AD Archive.

Posted: Thu, 22 Feb 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]

The vanity in the master bath is a custom design, the sink fittings and floor tiles are by Waterworks, the walls are sheathed in marble, and the jewelry box is from the 1880s. On the guest room patio, the cocktail table and daybed, which has cushions covered in a Holland & Sherry fabric, are midcentury pieces by John Good. If you are a fan of the new TV Series Bridgerton you may want to visit The Ranger’s House in Greenwich. In the TV show, the house is draped in stunning purple wisteria but this is not the case in real life.

Some like Highclere Castle are more stately homes than castles like Blenheim Palace. Life in the English stately home was rigidly hierarchical, both upstairs and downstairs. A large team of servants was responsible for the day-to-day running and upkeep of the house, with a strictly defined social structure ranging from the kitchen or scullery maid at the bottom to the butler and housekeeper at the top.

Wander through the labyrinth of rooms and see gorgeous rooms elegantly decorated, a chapel, and a beautiful Elizabethan walled garden, surrounded by a forest and filled with a variety of flowers, water features, and topiaries. Haddon Hall is one of those places in England that will leave you speechless and in awe, almost as though you’ve transported yourself into a fairy tale. This gorgeous manor home is located in Bakewell in the Peak District and dates back to the 11th century. Highclere Castle (home of Downton Abbey) was originally a Manor house that was bought by the Carnarvons in 1679. The original design of the manor cannot be seen today because it was substantially remodelled in 1852 in the Jacobethan style that reflected the fashion of the day.

Warwickshire

The manor house is worth a visit in itself for the stunning and well-maintained art, porcelain and furniture collection that belonged to the former owner, Margaret Greville. Upon her death, she gifted Polesden Lacey and her collection to the National Trust and it has since been one of their top properties for annual visitors. Stonor Manor itself has been home to the Stonor family for 850 years and has changed relatively little over that time.

Instead there are stripes and suzani cushions, matt emulsion on the walls and exposed furniture legs. Rough luxe has encouraged scrubbed floorboards and the stripping of later layers of paint and paper back to mottled sub-strata with the texture of history and use. This grand building is set in beautiful grounds, dotted with contemporary artwork and two large lakes.

Arguably the most famous is Brideshead in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, later adapted into a hugely popular television series starring Jeremy Irons. Though Brideshead, like Downton, focused on the family who owned it, a recurring theme throughout the book was the decline of these great English stately houses. Depicting an aristocratic dinner party at a stunning stately home, Gosford Park is a good old-fashioned ‘whodunit’ that plays to the public’s taste for intrigue, particularly in the context of the opulence and luxury enjoyed by the upper classes.

Robust operational plans are in place to ensure a first flight to Rwanda can be delivered within weeks, with multiple flights set to take off after this. UK government efforts to stop the boats and tackle illegal migration took a major step forward, after the Safety of Rwanda Bill completed its passage through Parliament overnight, Monday 22 April. Jerome Thiebault created a polished and petite bathroom complete with storage and a shower.

Many of the grandest of these English mansions and country homes were built with the hope of hosting Elizabeth I and her large retinue as they made their annual royal progress around England. Visiting English manor houses or stately homes is a wonderful step back in time to see how the “other half lived”. These English stately homes, in many cases, are still private residences and so some areas are off-limits to the public. Since many of these manor houses are “listed” buildings that mean that upkeep is exponentially more expensive due to the standards that must be maintained.

In many households, their young male staff members left to fight abroad, some sadly never returning. Others meanwhile left the big house in order to contribute to the war effort by working in munitions factories. The lucky ones taken on in these grand homes would have often had much higher standards of living compared with their peers. With such a penchant for sports, celebrations and general frivolity, the upkeep of such a house was extremely high. It thus became a necessity to have a great number of staff managing the everyday running of the house, taking care of every need and every whimsy of its employer. Whilst the wealthy created these homes with a great deal of extravagance and grandeur in mind, the homes quickly became a much needed retreat, offering a moment of peace away from the hustle and bustle of the London home.

Samatha Williams’s Tearoom in the Gatehouse is brimming with vintage charm and elegant accents. Working with Jacqueline Black and Michelle Porreca, Williams brought in a Chinoiserie wall covering to give the space a garden-like atmosphere. They also installed a grass cloth ceiling treatment and sisal rug to add texture. Maria Videla-Juniel, who designed the primary bathroom of the main house, also devised a welcoming entry to the Gate House.

Ponder over what life was like at this beautiful manor home hundreds of years ago while you sit at their on-site restaurant enjoying a pot of tea. The Tudor Hall itself was untouched for 300 years and contains some of the best-preserved furniture and tapestries in England. A castle can only be called a castle when it is built on an ancient structure that was used to withstand battles.

Surrounded by well-tended gardens, this Tudor manor has stood since the 1540s, although it was partly destroyed by a fire in the 1960s and had to undergo major restoration. Stroll through the parkland which includes several follies, an Ice House, the delightful Walled Garden or stop for a cup of tea in the Tea Rooms. The ground floor apartments of Lydiard House were opened to the public in 1955 after being restored. You can now wander through the rooms admiring ornate plasterwork and original family furnishings, portraits and paintings. The Dressing Room, which celebrates Diana Spencer who was the 2nd Viscountess Bolingbroke, is decorated in crisp blue and white and features a 17th Century painted window and an early 19th Century mechanical desk. Five minutes drive from junction 16 of the M4 motorway is the beautiful estate of Lydiard Park.

“Many of the most charming and authentic aspects of the house—those I thought were so English-country cliché way back then—still exist, untouched,” she says. It’s been four years now, and her family is still living there, enjoying the peaceful atmosphere that surrounds them, both in the country environs and the warm and inviting interiors that Brooks has maintained and updated to suit her tastes. Europe’s largest privately owned house, combining baroque and Palladian architecture, with extensive gardens the house is now in private hands and is working on a restoration project to bring the entire house back to its original state. There are 365 rooms but most cannot be visited although some can be seen with the specialty guides. An adult ticket is £12.50 which allows you to explore the open rooms and the extensive gardens.