Country House Research Articles

From country house to penthouse

In 2011 a new museum opened in Stockholm – Sven-Harry’s Art Museum – named after its initiator and funder, the building contractor Sven-Harry Karlsson. Besides a gallery for temporary exhibitions, the museum includes a permanent collection of art and applied art installed in a penthouse on top of the building. The installation is conceived as a full-scale replica of Karlsson’s former home in an eighteenth-century manor house. This article focuses on the reconstructed home and aims at situating it within a tradition of full-scale displays of architectural interiors – so-called period rooms – in Swedish cultural history museums. Since the start of the twentieth century, eighteenth-century architecture has had a central position in the Swedish cultural heritage. Sven-Harry’s replicated home, a small manor of the rococo era, fits perfectly into the national canon, which for a long time focused on the homes of the elites to illustrate development within the arts. Even though the recreated milieu in Sven-Harry’s museum depends on traditional museum practice, it is also typical of contemporary innovations. In the last few decades, even prestigious cultural history museums have utilized the periodroom format in unconventional ways, and the bold reconstruction of Sven-Harry’s home is clearly a representative of this trend.

White elephants: the country house and the state in independent Ireland, 1922–1973. By Emer Crooke. Pp xxiii + 263. Dublin: University College Dublin Press. 2018. €40.

White elephants: the country house and the state in independent Ireland, 1922–1973. By Emer Crooke. Pp xxiii + 263. Dublin: University College Dublin Press. 2018. €40.

Women of the country house in Ireland, 1860–1914. By Maeve O'Riordan. Pp 339. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. 2018. £85.

Women of the country house in Ireland, 1860–1914. By Maeve O'Riordan. Pp 339. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. 2018. £85.

Lead-Mining and the Lead Industry in Scotland, 1680–1780

Lead-mining was one of Scotland's few domestic industries during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. However, there is very little scholarly material available on this subject. T.C. Smout is one of the few historians who has written about the Scottish lead industry, but his articles were published in the 1960s and 70s. The aim of this article is address this gap in research by trying to establish the scale of mining activities, the industry's gross revenue, and its profit margins between 1680 and 1780. This paper relies heavily on archival records concerning Leadhills in Lanarkshire, which are primarily stored at Hopetoun House near South Queensferry. Leadhills was one of Scotland's two major lead mines and was acquired by the Hope family in the mid-seventeenth century. Mining activities at Leadhills quickly became the Hopes’ (who obtained the earldom of Hopetoun in 1703) primary source of income. The influence of the Hopes as lead barons became such that they built Hopetoun House, one of the country's most significant country houses, at the turn of the eighteenth century and aggrandised it for decades thereafter. This paper will confirm concretely the importance of Leadhills as a boon to the Hopes’ income and Scotland's increasingly globalised economy (particularly after the 1707 Union).

Beyond the pale: the country houses of the Jewish élite

Beyond the pale: the country houses of the Jewish élite

The modern country house as a Jewish form: a proposition

ABSTRACTAlthough the vast majority of modern country houses built or refurbished in the long nineteenth century were owned by non-Jews, Jews owned some of the most magnificent. Thus, these dwellings pose the same question that historians have raised about other aspects of diasporic Jewish practices: Was there anything particularly “Jewish,” about country houses owned by Jews? In this essay I propose a hypothesis – that Jewish country houses were the ideal-type of the modern country house. On the one hand, super-elite Jews took their capital, both cultural and real, their family networks, and their long experience interpreting and navigating the often-hostile worlds in which they found themselves and created country houses that were the model of the genre. On the other hand, I argue that Judaism itself mattered as much as the social and economic positioning of Jews produced by discrimination. Uniquely Jewish conceptualizations, and practices, of home, of time, and of space rendered Jews particularly comfortable with the complex interweaving of public and private intrinsic to the country house.

Jewish country houses and country house studies

ABSTRACTThe Jewish country houses explored in this issue represent a group of properties spread across Europe that have hitherto escaped systematic research by country house studies. In thinking about what was distinctively Jewish about the country houses of the Jewish elite this issue consolidates three significant trends in country house studies – the house, collections and wider estate as a dynamic entity shaped by a range of historical processes; the global interconnectedness of country houses; the importance of collaborative projects spanning the heritage sector and academic – and poses exciting new questions that may be profitably adapted by country house studies to advance scholarly understanding of non-Jewish houses.

TRANSFORMATION OF THE ESTATE TEXT IN A.P. CHEKHOV’S PROSE (1887–1990)

In this article the author analyzes functioning of the estate text peculiar to Russian literature, especially to A.P. Chekhov’s prose during the period of paradigmatic changes (1887) and mature works (the end of the 1880s – 1890s). For the last decades of the XIXth century, the estate discourse undergoes great changes in socio-historic, cultural and literature aspects. Chekhov's literary works determines the direction of the studied literary phenomenon development in many respects. Deconstruction of the estate literary matrix has been observed on the basis of five works by A.P. Chekhov. In the stories «Verochka» and «In the Country House» the hero is being transformed: in the first story, instead of the ero-carrier of a certain life philosophy and ideology, the character of the «eighties» is embodied,he is oriented to the positivist world image and at the same time possesses a post-romantic «solitary consciousness»; in the second one the character of misanthrope with quasi-positive views is embodied in a satirical mode. In the stories «At Home» and «A Visit to Friends» mythologem of the estate text is destroyed. In this case the «House» aquires the meaning of a dull place. This development was extremely productive in the literature at the turn of the century and in the XXth century. Upon arrival at the steppe estate the heroine of the first story quickly loses her «humanity» and life goal aimed at self-development. The leading character of the second story had an «estate» experience gone a long time ago; the present in the estate seems vulgar to him. The last story «The New Villa» thematically completes the plot of the «turn» of epochs in its estate version. The story shows a change in interaction of social actors in the process of changing socio-historical formations. A Russian intellectual’s call for alleviation of the people’s fate causes peasants’ alienation and unjust malice. In the end, the athor concludes the significance of changes in the entire paradigm of the estate text in the A.P. Chekhov’s prose setting its further development in Russian literature.

From pastoral to georgic: the Dutch Jewish country house as a rhizome

ABSTRACTScholars often analyze houses’ “Jewishness” vis-à-vis Jewish law and rituals. For Dutch Sephardic Jews during the long eighteenth century, however, identity is better understood using a model of rhizome in which “Jewishness” consists of the deliberate interbraiding of multiple traditions. Jewish identity was inextricable from the cultures in which Jews lived. Jewish homes along the Vecht River near Amsterdam exemplify the rhizome model. They embody the same braided pastoral ideal found in eighteenth-century Dutch Sephardic literature and material culture. As Sephardic Jews relocated to Netherlands Antilles, the rhizome present in country houses shifted, taking into account Jews’ new role as slave owners. Thus while buitenplaatsen along the Vecht embraced the Jewish pastoral ideal of a retreat from mercantile life, landhuizen in Curaçao evoked a georgic ideal that channelled the residents’ gaze not on rivers, gardens, and grottos, but on guard stations, slave huts, and enslaved workers. Leisure became redefined as an ability to watch rather than retreat from labour. Taken together, Dutch Jewish country houses along the Vecht and in Curaçao challenge the notion that Jewish material culture has a “single root system.”

Farming Odd Kin in Patchy Anthropocenes

How do we make sense of the uneven landscape in Yilan, Taiwan, where small-scale organic farming and luxurious country houses grow side by side? This essay suggests that we see both the rise of lux...

An English Country House in Calcutta: mapping networks between Government House, the statesman John Adam, and the architect Robert Adam

Government House in Calcutta, today known as the Raj Bhavan of West Bengal, was built between 1799 and 1803 as the official residence for the Governor-General of Fort William, then the 1st Marquess Wellesley. It is well-established that Government House is modelled after Kedleston Hall in Derbyshire, England, known for the involvement of Robert Adam in its design. A significant fact linking Adam, and therefore Kedleston, with Government House is the previously unacknowledged presence of Adam’s great-nephew, the statesman John Adam, in Calcutta at the time Government House was designed and built. In the exploration of Scottish architectural and familial networks within the British empire, this article seeks to locate the identities of Robert Adam and John Adam within a series of exchanges: between Government House and Kedleston Hall; between public buildings and private houses; between India and Britain; and finally between Scottish, English and British identities. In the context of these exchanges, the study of Government House allows us to connect Robert Adam and John Adam, explore concealments of Scottish identity, and ultimately map previously unknown familial, professional and architectural networks.

3D GIS and ‘The Royaltie Of Sight’: Recreating ‘Prospects’ and ‘Perspectives’ within an English designed landscape c. 1550–1660

AbstractExperience through sight has been recognized as a contributing factor in the shaping of historic landscapes, where humans could express themselves in response to their aesthetic and intellectual qualities. What was experienced, however, was not only dependent on the ‘prospect’, or landscape view, but also on the individual ‘perspective’ of the spectator. Three-dimensional Geographical Information Systems (3D GIS) has enabled investigations into landscape visibility within digitized historic environments and can therefore assist the analysis and understanding of this phenomenon. This article applies 3D GIS to a currently under-researched area of landscape history, English designed landscapes of the 16th and 17th centuries. From country houses and gardens to parks and working estates, these landscapes were manipulated in response to the landowners’ ‘perspectives’ towards the landscape, which subsequently determined the visibility or invisibility of features within certain ‘prospects’. This concept was dubbed ‘The Royaltie of Sight’ by Henry Wotton in 1624. By using 3D GIS to recreate a designed landscape that poses challenges which have previously hindered its analysis, the characteristics of ‘prospects’ can be ascertained using viewshed analysis and the individual ‘perspective’ of the landowner interpreted using phenomenology and reception theory. The results presented in this article demonstrate how 3D GIS has benefited studies into English designed landscapes and improved knowledge of how perception influenced landscape change.

ПРОБЛЕМА НАЦИОНАЛЬНОЙ ИДЕНТИЧНОСТИ В АНГЛИЙСКИХ РОМАНАХ (НА МАТЕРИАЛЕ «ГРОЗОВОГО ПЕРЕВАЛА» Э. БРОНТЕ)

The article considers the relevant problem of national identity. In the English novels, this problem is associated with the “country house” image. The paper argues that the “country house” concept and the image of Arcadia related to it play the key role in the process of developing national identity and they are a figurative representation of the English national idea. Scientific originality of the study lies in the fact that the author clarifies the interaction of the country-house novel genre and the England-Arcadia literary image by the example of E. Brontë’s novel “Wuthering Heights”.

A Study of Pope’s Country House Poem Epistle to Bathurst

A Study of Pope’s Country House Poem Epistle to Bathurst

Doctoring the Country House: Edward Wrench and Chatsworth

This article explores the role of Edward Wrench in doctoring Chatsworth House. He purchased the practice in Baslow in 1862 and from the beginning sought to become the doctor of choice for the Devonshire family when in residence and the numerous staff that they employed. Edward Wrench’s diaries which exists in an unbroken run until his death in 1912 create a prism through which to explore the country house and its consumption history from a different angle. It will examine the importance of men like the Duke of Devonshire in establishing a practice both in the medical marketplace and within society. While the local GP might call in a consultant when conditions appeared to be anything other than minor this did not mean that they did not play an important role in the health of an aristocratic family and their staff. Overall it gives a sense of the conditions suffered and treated locally. More importantly for a young GP setting up in practice and gaining the trust of a wealthy patient could mean the difference between success and failure. While historians have explored the evolution of General Practice, the historiography remains short of detailed case studies and this article will start to fill this gap.

Supplying the kitchens of the earls of devonshire in the mid-17th century

The country house has long been seen as a space of luxury consumption. Large houses are characterised as enclaves of London, spending all their money in capital, rather than buying goods locally. They sapped wealth from the local area rather than stimulating economic activity. This paper analyses data from highly detailed account books which record the kitchen expenditure at Chatsworth and Hardwick Hall in the years 1658-1660 to understand how the kitchens of the Earls of Devonshire were supplied. In discussing the ways in which the household sourced foodstuffs and how much they spent doing so, this paper challenges the prevailing idea that houses are economic leeches on the local area. The Devonshires spent a vast sum of money on food locally; helping to create communities of commerce in the local area and to fuel a vibrant and various grocery trade.

‘I am but a livery servant’: examining ruptures in master-servant relationships of the nineteenth-century country house

The balance of power in nineteenth-century country estates was firmly weighted in the employer’s favour, making it difficult for servants to carve out an identity, find a voice, or establish self-worth. Their characters, morality and conduct were often problematized by the upper classes, and they were frequently derided, as Davidoff (1993) suggests, for ‘having very ambivalent attitudes towards their employers’. Applying discourse analysis to data derived from nineteenth-century servant letters uncovered in two archived collections (the Savernake Estate and Mote House) this article reveals the complex tensions and ambiguities that characterised working relations between masters and servants in such households. By focussing explicitly on how servants managed perceptions of themselves in moments of rupture this article considers how their narratives can be re-conceived as active dialogues in which different representations of the self and the complex layers of the domestic service relationship are continually and creatively re-formulated.

The country house and the Great War: Irish and British experiences. Edited by Terence Dooley and Christopher Ridgway. Pp 208. Dublin: Four Courts Press. 2016. €22.45 paperback.

The country house and the Great War: Irish and British experiences. Edited by Terence Dooley and Christopher Ridgway. Pp 208. Dublin: Four Courts Press. 2016. €22.45 paperback.

The Great Famine in Kinsale. By Catherine Flanagan. Pp 75. Dublin: Four Courts Press. 2018. €9.95. - Castle Hyde: the changing fortunes of an Irish country house. By Terence Dooley. Pp 62. Dublin: Four Courts Press. 2017. €9.95. - The shawlies: Cork's women street traders and the ‘merchant city’. By Susan Marie Martin. Pp 63. Dublin: Four Courts Press. 2017.

The Great Famine in Kinsale. By Catherine Flanagan. Pp 75. Dublin: Four Courts Press. 2018. €9.95. - Castle Hyde: the changing fortunes of an Irish country house. By Terence Dooley. Pp 62. Dublin: Four Courts Press. 2017. €9.95. - The shawlies: Cork's women street traders and the ‘merchant city’. By Susan Marie Martin. Pp 63. Dublin: Four Courts Press. 2017.

Geleneksel Kır Meskenlerinde Mimari Degradasyon: Sinop İli Örneği

Günümüz dünyasında her alanda görülen hızlı değişim, Türkiye kırlarını da etkisi altına almış, geleneksel kır meskenleri çok hızlı gelişen bir mimari degradasyonla karşı karşıya kalmıştır. Bu çalışmada Sinop yöresinde bulunan geleneksel ahşap meskenlerdeki değişim ele alınmış, coğrafi çevrenin bütün özelliklerini içinde barındıran bu konutların hızla nasıl aslından uzaklaştırıldıkları ve bunu etkileyen hususlar üzerinde durulmuştur. Sinop yöresinde, çevredeki zengin orman örtüsünden faydalanılarak inşa edilen ahşap kır meskenlerinin bir kısmı göçler sonucu hızla boşalan yerleşmelerde kaderine terk edilerek yok olma tehlikesi ile karşı karşıya kalırken halen kullanılan meskenler için de farklı bir tehlike söz konusudur. Gerek yeni bir ev inşa etmenin ekonomik zorlukları, gerekse kerestenin pahalılığı ve doğal çevreden artık temin edilemez oluşu yöre halkının mevcut ahşap evlerini en kolay ve ucuz şekilde kullanılabilir hale getirmeye zorlamaktadır. Bu süreçte; evlerin çatısındaki taş örtü yerini kiremit ve sac örtüye, ahşap malzeme ise yerini tuğla/briket gibi malzemelere bırakmaya başlamıştır. Sonuç olarak yöredeki geleneksel konutlar hızla yerini doğal ve çağdaş yapı malzemesinin birlikte yer aldığı ne geleneksel ne de modern olmayan konutlara bırakmaktadır.