Agricultural History Review, Volume 65 Part 2 (2017), p. 347

The country house is an established part of English architecture. This, however, was not always the case. Political, societal and economic changes during the twentieth century placed the country house and the landed order under threat at a time when declining landed authority coincided with the ascendancy of the state. Within these shifting power relations the key question was what should become of the country house and who should be responsible. Estate owners and architectural historians, confused civil servants and reluctant local authorities, together with amenity organizations and societies – including the National Trust – grappled with a range of important questions. Which houses were of national architectural importance? What were the roles of the various actors? And what were to be considered suitable new uses for these buildings?

This culminated in the landmark Destruction of the country house exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 1974. Curated by architectural historians devoted to country house preservation, it catalogued and lamented loss at a crucial time and in doing so, cemented the country house in the popular consciousness. Such is the legacy of the Destruction exhibition that no book on this subject can escape it. Thus the introduction of Lost mansions opens by stating that one in six of the great country houses in Britain and Ireland were demolished between 1900 and 2000, destruction which eventually totalled 1900 properties and peaked in the year immediately following the end of the Second World War.

Mournful loss has thus pervaded the popular history of the country house. Yet this interesting volume of six essays helps to refocus the histories of the twentieth-century country house away from loss per se and towards new themes including the causes of loss, contemporary representations of loss, and the implications of more recent interest in great estates, the latter principally driven by the popularity of the Downton Abbey television series. Importantly, too, the volume broadens the debate to consider examples from England, Scotland and Ireland. It is perhaps apt that the opening image is a photograph of Roseneath Castle mid-explosion: where other books have ended, Lost mansions begins.

In the first chapter, Jon Stobart sets about to recover ‘lost histories’ through the themes of material culture, processes and people. He draws upon fragments of archival evidence including inventories and sales catalogues, theoretical approaches to understanding consumption linked to wealth and status, and little-known histories of female landowners and their impact on country houses in order to successfully ‘reinvigorate the country house as a lived space’ (p. 40).

Terence Dooley, in considering the Irish country house, identifies how political unrest and demands for land reform had a significant bearing on country house losses. This is charted through Ireland’s complex and turbulent nineteenth- and early twentieth-century agricultural history, which included famine, brief agricultural prosperity during the mid-1800s, global recession from 1877, the establishment of the reforming Land League and subsequent Land War. This instability led to a period of country house retrenchment and the sale of house contents. A long history of ensuing resentment, with land rights at the heart, is viewed as directly culminating in acts of military separatism and agrarian agitation, including the widespread burning of an estimated 300 country houses between 1920 and 1923. Such actions were in part undertaken in the hope that small landholders or the landless could benefit from landowners being ousted. One legacy of this contested history is that the country house became a symbol of British rule in Ireland and, as such, was never regarded as a part of Irish national identity or heritage.

Dooley’s overview provides the context for Ian d’Alton’s literary perspective on Bowen’s Court in County Clare, the former ancestral home to the Anglo-Irish author Elizabeth Bowen. Despite surviving the troubles in the 1920s it was demolished in 1959 following its sale to a local farmer. Through the essay, d’Alton innovatively intertwines Bowen’s own history of the house and her critique of gentry life with literary representations to create ‘images of lost mansions and their meaning as literary texts’ (p. 63).

Barbara Wood’s chapter offers a different perspective on loss. Rather than physical loss and destruction, she considers how country houses have lost their purpose and sense of place and the implications of this for their future presentation, especially where familial continuity was lost. She explores this through three examples, including Barrington Court in Somerset, the first country house bequeathed to the National Trust in 1907. Not really knowing what to do with the house, it was let on a 100-year lease to Colonel Arthur Lyle, a gentleman farmer with a passion for architecture. Lyle completely redeveloped and remodelled Barrington, acquired surrounding land and established a successful model farming estate. It is interesting to note here how changing ownership could help breathe new life into estates and drive agricultural innovation. Despite this, and following a several short-term tenancies, the estate was eventually returned to the Trust in 2008. The identity of the house and its estate had been made and remade and, as such, the Trust have found it difficult to identify a coherent narrative to present to the public.

The two final chapters both offer contemporary histories of the country house. Thus Michael Davis explores more recent aesthetic debates regarding the maintenance, use and preservation of ruined Scottish castles. The architectural importance of the Scottish castle continues to spark debates about conservation, preservation and the appropriateness of restoration techniques. In exploring specific examples, Davis highlights how sympathetic restoration can be a positive and pragmatic alternative to decay and loss. James Raven moves south to reflect on the country houses of Essex, and in particular Marks Hall, exploring the pervasive ‘heritage of loss’, which, through the Destruction of the country house exhibition, enveloped the twentieth-century history of the country house. In looking forward, Raven identifies that, ‘we need more grounded interpretive projects as many continue to wallow ... in Waugh-torn landscape where country house history has been high-jacked [sic] for very particular – if insinuated – political and cultural agendas’ (p. 123).

In redefining ‘loss’ as more than simple physical destruction, the contributors to this short volume help us to reimagine British and Irish country houses and their late modern histories. The very readable and nicely produced volume, with helpful abstracts for each of the chapters, is thus a very welcome addition to the field.