What Can Victorian Country-House Planning Tell Us About English Social Values?
What can Victorian country-house planning tell us about English social values? The nineteenth-century remains one of the greatest periods of country-house building to date. The concept of ‘Young England’, a romanticised reverence to Medieval, Elizabethan, Jacobean and Baroque themes, accrued popularity among a growing landed gentry, with fortunes in industry and commerce. Country Life publications and literature, including Heir of Redclyffe and Tom Brown, perpetuated gentlemanly lifestyles. Etiquette books meanwhile emulated Queen Victoria’s own ‘model’ family, inspiring new landowners investing in the most influential of status symbols - the country house. Whether grand, leisurely sites or modest family homes, this work aims to link such typically English social values as ambition, pride, originality, comfort, privacy, morality and technological innovation with their architectural counterparts. To the modern eye, Victorian country houses noticeably appeared ambitious in scale, the £120,000i spent on Bearwood, Berkshire giving testament to this. Mr Gregory’s "fancy to build a magnificent house in the Elizabethan style"ii became evident at Lincolnshire’s Harlaxton Manoriii, the grand piers and arches of its preceding gateways further evoking a sense of grandiose most becoming to a gentleman. Such flights of fancy were taken further at Cragside, Northumberland where Lord Armstrong's fortune accrued via engineering works enabled Richard Norman Shaw’s design that incorporated several vernacular period styles. Of traditional aristocracy, commented industrialist Hippolyte Taine in the 1860s: "let them govern, but let them be fit to govern."iv William Burges’ implementation of stairs behind a screens passage at Knightshayes Court, Devonshirev showed the patron's intention in seeking comparison to a medieval lord surveying his estate, dutifully dispensing hospitality to guests.
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