The Enduring Appeal of the English Stately Home: from Medieval Castles to Downton Abbey

Table Of Content

• The Enduring Appeal of the English Stately Home: from Medieval Castles to Downton Abbey
• Castle Howard, York
• A country house furnished with furniture finds from another country house
• Club Tropical – Six Exotic Gardens to Visit Across the UK
• What is the difference between a Palace and a Castle?
• Next article

The symmetrical details with a grand entrance in creamy stone and corner towers look out over the park and lake. As well as the stunning house with artefacts from William John Bankes’ tips to Egypt in the 1800s, you can also admire paintings from Van Dyke and Titian. Perhaps one of the most popular reasons guests visit Kingston Lacy house is to admire the Spanish room. With the gilded ceiling that was brought from the Contarini Palace in Venice, it’s no wonder guests return time after time to the house. Cannon Hall encompasses over 70 acres of stunningly beautiful gardens, follies, parkland and a lake along with a Farmyard visit attraction and a wonderful farm shop.

The Enduring Appeal of the English Stately Home: from Medieval Castles to Downton Abbey

Other notable features of the place include Edwardian Belle Epoque interiors, a spa, a golf course, a fishing lake, and Italianate gardens. Most country homes were large houses or mansions, but they were never as big as a great house usually owned by royalty or manor houses that belonged to lords and higher nobility. They were also rarely occupied by the master or the lady of the house, as those that owned country houses also owned a town house to go to for business in the city. At one point in time English manor houses numbered over 5000 in the 19th century but today sadly only around 3000 remain. Of these 3000 many have been turned into tourist attractions as the cost of running such a large estate is pretty prohibitive these days.

Castle Howard, York

Some like Highclere Castle are more stately homes than castles like Blenheim Palace. Life in the English stately home was rigidly hierarchical, both upstairs and downstairs. A large team of servants was responsible for the day-to-day running and upkeep of the house, with a strictly defined social structure ranging from the kitchen or scullery maid at the bottom to the butler and housekeeper at the top.

A country house furnished with furniture finds from another country house

The French Colonial house style can be seen around the world and has significant variety among its sub-styles. The elliptical fanlights and paladin windows are key distinguishing features from Georgian-style homes. Most Dutch Colonial homes you find today are actually from the Colonial Revival period of the early 20th Century. Original Dutch Colonial homes feature flared roof eaves and creative wood and brickwork. They are much more ornamental than classic Colonial homes, though the Dutch Colonial Revival style tends to be more subdued than the original Dutch Colonial homes.

The house you can see today has its design based on the Villa Borghese in Rome and so sports a rare (for British manor houses) Italianate exterior. You’ll see where Winston Churchill was passionate about gardens and spent his free time painting. Make sure you don’t miss looking inside his painting studio, which has a sizable collection of his original paintings. Contributed by Constance at A Well-Read Wanderer, like this guide to visiting Charles Dicken’s home and museum in London.

Instead there are stripes and suzani cushions, matt emulsion on the walls and exposed furniture legs. Rough luxe has encouraged scrubbed floorboards and the stripping of later layers of paint and paper back to mottled sub-strata with the texture of history and use. This grand building is set in beautiful grounds, dotted with contemporary artwork and two large lakes.

What makes a house a Manor?

Known as St. Catherine’s Court, the home’s oldest section dates back to the 15th century, with subsequent additions in the 1600s and early 1900s. The home was unfurnished save for a piano and curtains in the library when they purchased it, presenting a rather daunting task. Sir Seton Wills was selling some of the Elizabethan furniture collection from his Grade I–listed country house, Littlecote, and helped the couple pick out what would work for them.

Georgian Style

Wander through the labyrinth of rooms and see gorgeous rooms elegantly decorated, a chapel, and a beautiful Elizabethan walled garden, surrounded by a forest and filled with a variety of flowers, water features, and topiaries. Haddon Hall is one of those places in England that will leave you speechless and in awe, almost as though you’ve transported yourself into a fairy tale. This gorgeous manor home is located in Bakewell in the Peak District and dates back to the 11th century. Highclere Castle (home of Downton Abbey) was originally a Manor house that was bought by the Carnarvons in 1679. The original design of the manor cannot be seen today because it was substantially remodelled in 1852 in the Jacobethan style that reflected the fashion of the day.

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With its outstanding views of the River Derwent across to the Wye and Derwent valleys, the house’s setting in acres of parkland is simply breathtaking. Generally, the house and gardens can be visited for £36 which includes parking. Located in the heart of Buckinghamshire is one of England’s most beautiful manor houses, the Waddesdon Manor. Built in French Renaissance style in the 1870s by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild, Waddesdon Manor is home to an exquisite collection of arts and is open to visitors throughout the year. Cowley Manor is situated in the Cotswolds, just outside of Cheltenham and is one of the best UK’s luxury family hotels. The land here is old, passing from Edward the Confessor to various hands through the centuries.

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However, the late 19th and early 20th centuries were the swansong of the traditional English country house lifestyle. Increased taxation and the effects of World War I led to the demolition of hundreds of houses; those that remained had to adapt to survive. The designers worked with a color palette of Dunn-Edwards paints, and several chose to highlight the brand’s 2024 Color of the Year, a steely blue called Skipping Stones. Nods to Pasadena’s famous peacocks can be found throughout the designs, and many creators fearlessly brought in statement floors, enveloped their spaces with jewel tones, and added texture to ceilings. Others focused on bringing the beauty of the estate’s gardens and views inside with verdant murals, floral fabrics, and nature-inspired lighting.

Complete with its own ancient stone circle, a Chapel and stunning Stonor Park and gardens it overlooks some of the best views of the Chiltern countryside. As you drive up to the house you pass by two lodges built in the 1790s and the ‘new’ drive which was laid down in 1760. Elisabeth Fraser Spencer Stanhope, the last of the family line, sold the Hall to Barnsley Corporation in 1951 and the decision was made to turn the building into a museum, which opened in 1957. From the 1950s to the present day, a remarkable mix of paintings, drawings, ceramics, glass, metalwork and furniture has been brought together for the public to enjoy and entry is entirely free. The rooms at the Museum include both historic room settings and gallery displays of artworks spanning the centuries.