Customer Reviews

Life in the English Country House: A Social and Architectural History

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Mark Girouard, an architectural historian, has traced the roles of form and function in England's Great Houses in this densely illustrated, sensitively written book. Floor-plans, innumerable photographs and drawings (many of homes now destroyed), and portraits pepper the text, which is readability itself.

The book follows a chronological path from the Mediaval Household to the present day. The text isn't dry at all. Delicious details abound: Bess of Hardwick pacing her Great Chamber of Hardwick Hall, waiting for the royal visit that never came in the instantly-dated house she'd built for this very purpose, ... The origin of the phrase "backstairs intrigues" (both political and sexual).... the slow but persistant birth of the aristocratic ideal of "privacy"--and how it affected dining halls....the rise of the great dilettante libraries (and the rooms to house them).....and the advent of the freakish innovation of indoor plumbing (and a picture of the Duke of Wellington's elaborate WC) are just a few tidbits.

Mr. Girouard doesn't neglect the "downstairs" portion of a Great House, because he's interested in the whole institution as a functioning unit. Some of the most intriguing photos are of beloved servants' portraits, and the almost Shaker-like beauty of a working kitchen or laundry. Included, also, is a printed "Summary of Livery Men's Duties, Etc., Etc.", of Hatfield House, and darned if it doesn't sound like instructions for empoyees at an indifferent New York hotel!

This book is a delicious retrospective, and will make any red-blooded Anglophile who longs for one of these faded leviathans very happy indeed. Now, if you need me further, I will be in the Orangery.

This book is brilliant. It reminded me of a paleontology book where the author looks at the shells of ancient marine fossils and reconstructs their lives from the shape of the shells.

From the structure of the English Country House Girouard recreates the lives of those who lived in them. Not just the Lord and Lady but all those who lived and worked there. How many people were in this room during dinner? How did the food get to the dining area (usually a long trek. This minimized the chance the kitchen would burn the place down but mimimized the chance dinner hadn't congealed). How many people (ladies in waiting, servants, servants of servants) were sleeping in the room together in 1500, 1700 or 1890? The idea that one would actually have any privacy is a very recent concept.

A fascinating reconstruction of what life was like not just for the head of the household, but for all who lived on the estate.

Don't be put off at first by the black and white photos. This book has some color photos, and I was at first hesitant to purchase this book because it seemed to be mostly black and white photography.
However, once I began to read this book, all thoughts about photos went out of my head! This book is informative, intelligent and thorough. The author has studied his subject very well, and writes in a clear and easy to follow manner. I really do find the floorplans to be an invaluable tool towards understanding the buildings the author is describing.
I am currently using this book as a research tool for my novel, but I did buy this book just for the love of the subject and I was not disappointed.
I would recommend this book again and again to anyone with a love of history and architecture.

With all that one can read and see of the impressive country homes of England's landed classes, the reasons the houses were designed as they were and the role they served is not always apparent. Architectural historian Mark Girouard addresses this critical gap in understanding in "Life in the English Country House: A Social and Architectural History", explaining whom these households comprised, how they functioned, and how their design served its purposes from the Middle Ages until World War II. Over the course of centuries, the style, nature and number of rooms changed, as did the relationships of those who occupied them, so examining the homes of the ruling classes proves to be a fascinating lesson in social history.

Girouard presents the history of the country home alongside that of its household according to era: The Medieval Household and House, The Elizabethan and Jacobean House, The Formal House 1630-1720, The Social House 1720-70, The Arrival of Informality 1770-1830, The Moral House 1830-1900, and The Indian Summer 1900-1940. One chapter digresses to recount the history of books, collections and the rooms that housed them, and another talks about the evolving technologies used to heat, light, supply water, and dispose of sewage through the ages. Included are over 200 illustrations: floor plans, photographs, and drawings in black-and-white and color. "Life in the English Country House" is a literate and enlightening history of the homes and the power that they both reflected and fostered for eight centuries.

Anyone who has read Jane Austen or Thackeray, or followed the adventures of Hercule Poirot, or has watched "Gosford Park," has had some exposure to the cliché of the English country house and its denizens. There were large estates in medieval times, of course, but the country estate to which the wealthy (which usually meant the titled) could escape from the city, is largely an outgrowth of Henry VIII stripping the Church of its rural properties and turning them over to those families who had supported him and to whom he owed a favor. The large houses, whether converted monasteries or purpose-built, grew in number during the Georgian era and especially in the 19th century, but the heavy taxation of the 20th century reduced their number greatly. The notion of the country house, with jowly gentlemen in dinner jackets playing billiards and bored ladies doing needlepoint on the veranda, now seems almost quaint, but there's a great deal of social history there -- much of it preserved by the large and intricate administrative systems required to run such an establishment. Girouard was both an architectural historian and a noted figure on the BBC and he does an excellent job of leading the reader through the evolution of the buildings themselves, as well as describing the lives of the family upstairs and the much larger number of staff downstairs and in the gardens and stables. The volume is heavily illustrated (mostly in black-and-white, unfortunately) with paintings, portraits, architectural plans, and photographs, and the narrative never becomes too specialized or technical. An excellent piece of work.

I was more interested in the beautiful pictures this book offered when I purchased it, but after reading a few pages I became completely engrossed in the ins and outs of english country house. The book begins with the medieval house and whisks the readers through centuries of changes that altered not only the country house, but those who occupied them.

Life in the English Country House offers a history of the great hall, the backstairs, the great chamber, the parlor, and many others. The book also offers a history of the people who once lived in these grand homes. You will find a history of the steward, the footman, the butler, and the gradual segregation of the country house servant.

There are also many fascinating stories that the author shares with the readers. One of my favorites was surrounding The King of of Spain's visit to the Duke of Somerset's Petworth in 1703. The King was welcome, but not by the Duke, but by Queen Anne's husband, Prince George, who showed him around the estate as if the country house was his own. The author writes that "the principal function of the duke seems to have been to pay the bills." I also enjoyed the story of Queen Elizabeth's visit to Edward Seymour's Elvethan, who the author writes nearly went bankrupt after his extravagant but politically necessary hospitality.

Life in the English Country House is not only a fascinating read, but it contains beautiful illustrations of some of England's most breathtaking country houses. Most of the pictures are in black and white, but there are quite a few in color. Whether you are doing research for a novel or just curious about english country house, this will book will educate you on the complicated history behind these beautiful historic buildings.

Mark Girouard's book, "Life in the English Country House: A Social and Architectural History", is a unique study of the relationship between the social development of the English aristocracy and the architectural evolution of their homes. The book is arranged chronologically to show the structural progression of the social hierarchy in society and its impact on the buildings. The author delves deeply into the facets of life in each major period, from the Middle Ages through 1940, and relates these changes to the adjustment of the layout and design of their domestic structures. In the Victorian era, society placed a great emphasis on propriety, which resulted in an architectural separation of inherently male rooms, the billiards room and study for instance, from those commonly utilized by females, such as the morning room and boudoir. It is interesting to note, though much of the book is devoted to the social element, Girouard is trained as an architectural historian. Yet his exploration of the social aspect and its relationship to buildings is complete and highly detailed, without being long or tedious.

While other authors, such as Nicholas Cooper in his "Houses of the Gentry: 1480 - 1680", do detail the changes in society that guided the major design modifications of country house architecture, most do so in a much broader sense. Cooper, for instance, picks one time period to investigate and focuses on the architect and the stylistic features of the architecture as an example of art. Girouard traces the daily life of the occupants to explain the function and layout of particular rooms within a castle or country house. Much of Girouard's research is focused on the ceremony and daily routine as they played out in the layout of the homes. Some other authors, such as Gervase Jackson-Stops and James Pipkin in their work "The English Country House: A Grand Tour", do look at the evolution of the function of particular rooms, the dining room for example, but still place much of their efforts on the physical appearance of the room rather than its relationship to the house as a whole. Girouard is concerned with the use of the room and offers very little in the way of descriptions of artistic additions and appearance of specific examples. Girouard connects the English aristocratic society to their architecture in a way that no other author seems to have been able to do, through extensive research on ceremony and procedure of their daily lives.

The book opens with a chapter about the overall function of a country house as a "power house," the symbol of the influence and authority of the owner. This sets the stage for his view that the house is a physical manifestation of the social hierarchy of society and the floor plan exhibits the lord's relationship to others in the house, including guests and servants. A great portion of the text explains the roles of the servants within the building, and details the duties of each position and how they developed with the changing society. The author traces the progression of the aristocratic homeowner's lifestyle through the major English historical periods. This chronological format provides an excellent framework for illustrating the development of the positions and how the rooms inside functioned within the whole of the house. He explains the ceremony involved with the meals held in the hall of a medieval castle and the movement of the position of the highest ranking lord during meals from the floor of the hall, to a raised dais in the hall, outward into a grand chamber and spreading farther into withdrawing rooms and bed chambers. One of the major points made in the book is how the idea of privacy develops and how the lord retreats farther and farther into his own personal domain. To accomplish this task, the author draws on a variety of sources, including contemporary literature, surviving correspondence of those who lived in the homes, and the records kept by the residents. He draws upon many primary documents and has firsthand knowledge of the places he discusses. Girouard almost completely ignores the decorative and stylistic development of the architecture, instead, focusing his attention on the functionality of the rooms that would be found in most country houses of the period. He chose examples based on how they displayed the typical organization of the household.

The overall appearance of the book fit well with the content; however, there are some formatting choices that could be improved. The font chosen for the text was easily legible and appropriate for a scholarly publication. There was an excellent balance between the amount of text and images included within the book. Most of the images are in black and white, though there are a significant number done in color. The crisp detail, quality, and number of the images make up for the lack of color. The most useful images are the floor plans, which clearly illustrate the points made by the author in the text regarding the layout of individual rooms, how they developed, and their relationship to one another. One criticism of the book is that the images do not always correlate to what is being discussed or are located several pages after the text to which they relate. I felt the images could have been dispersed through the text in a somewhat more organized manner and the captions could be more consistent in their correlation to the image. Sometimes the captions are found directly under the image, but other times they are at the bottom of the page or on an opposite page. The bibliographic information on all of the photographs is located at the end of the book, which saves space within the book for text. Included with the photographic citations at the end of the text are all of the notes for each chapter. Their inclusion at the end is a choice that, while conserving the space on the page for more text and images, also creates a tedious task for the viewer, who has to continually flip to the end of the book to learn all of the pertinent information.

At the time of publication, Girouard held the position of Slade Professor of Art at Oxford University in England. Girouard is a prolific author, having written various other publications relating to English and other western European architecture, especially aristocratic homes. Some of his other titles include: "Cities and People: A Social and Architectural History", "The Victorian Country House", and "Robert Smythson and the Elizabethan Country House". In 1967, Girouard was awarded the Alice Davis Hitchcock Medallion by the Society of Architectural Historians, which is granted to the most outstanding architectural book, written by a British author or a foreign author about British architecture. He is a well-known scholar on the subject of English country house architecture. In the Preface to the book, Girouard explains his interest in the social structure of life in the English aristocracy and how he applies that interest to his field of architectural studies.

Within the text, Girouard does an excellent job of clearly expressing his points in a manner that would be coherent even to those without a developed knowledge of architectural vocabulary. His mixture of social history and architectural development is a captivating read intended primarily for those interested in social history or architecture, even if they do not have a background in either subject. The only portion of the text that can be somewhat confusing is the job titles of the many servants. However, this is almost entirely unavoidable due to the great number of jobs and their changing nature through time. This is especially true when servants took on new titles or the job responsibilities are divided among several new positions, as with the yeomen who developed into valets and butlers in later generations. The language is easily understandable and illustrates the author's point very well. The content of the text is an excellent reference for those doing research in the field, but will also appeal to readers who are simply interested in social history.

The supplementary materials added to the end of this book are extremely useful. All of the notes for each chapter are included here, after the body of text. They are separated by chapters and offer the reader information on the sources utilized by the author. While their placement within the text may not have been the most practical for the situation, their content is exemplary. The notes begin with an explanation of Household Regulations, which are the records and rules governing large aristocratic and royal households from the Middle Ages through the Eighteenth Century. The author explains the common abbreviations for some of the institutions he regularly consulted and included in his citations. One example would be the Historic Manuscripts Commission, which is referred to as the H.M.C., throughout the notes. The author considered that the audience might not understand what would be common abbreviations to those in the field. Also contained at the end of the text is a seven-page index. The index is comprehensive and covers almost all of the pertinent ideas, people, and places included within the text.

The book illustrates the impact of social change on the architecture of English country homes, from the gentry of the Restoration, who adopted the styles of continental Europe, to the Victorian house owners, who avoided non-English vocabulary in architecture so as to appear less ostentatious and arrogant. Girouard highlights the way social custom shaped the layout of the house rather than the assembly of stylistic design elements. This book provides a unique perspective on the development of English aristocratic architecture. It is well organized and understandable. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the field of English History; the information on the daily life of the aristocracy can be useful to people doing research in other fields as well. Girouard manages a complete survey of the development of the castle and the country house from the Middle Ages through the early Twentieth Century, when the style of living no longer required the construction of new country houses and the general attitude towards those already in existence turned to the preservation of the historically significant buildings.

This book has both plans and pictures, which is what I want from an architecture book. It also has a lot of history. Worth considering.

I bought the hardcover to replace the worn-out paperback. I consult this book often and am glad to have a good sturdy copy in my library.