English country house

The English country house is generally accepted as a large house or mansion, once in the ownership of an individual who also most likely owned another great house in the West End of London. Hence one moved from one's town house to one's country house.

Related Topics:
Country house - House - Mansion - Great house - West End - London

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Country houses and stately homes are sometimes confused—while a country house is always in the country, a stately home can also be in a town. Apsley House, built for the Duke of Wellington at the corner of Hyde Park ('No. 1, London' it was called), is one example. Other country houses such as Ascott in Buckinghamshire were deliberately designed not to be stately, and to harmonise with the landscape, while some of the great houses such as Kedleston Hall and Holkham Hall were built as "power houses" to impress and dominate the landscape, and were certainly intended to be "stately homes". Today many former "stately homes", while still country houses, are far from stately and most certainly not homes.

Related Topics:
Stately home - Apsley House - Duke of Wellington - Hyde Park - Ascott - Kedleston Hall - Holkham Hall

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The country house was not just a weekend retreat for aristocrats, but often a full time residence for the minor gentry who were a central node in the "squirearchy" that ruled Britain until the Reform Act of 1832 (as documented in The Purefoy Letters, 1735-53 by L G Mitchell). Even some of the formal business of the shire was transacted in the Hall.

Related Topics:
Gentry - Reform Act - 1832

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