Material Culture of the English Country House

Reconnecting Standen with Beale family history has taken many forms since the house was bequeathed to the Trust, from the recording of memories of visiting descendants in 1999 to the staging of a family reunion in 2006. As my project has progressed, general interest in the social and cultural context of the Beales’ life at the house has grown, more donations of family archives have come back and another family
reunion held this summer welcomed over 170 guests.

‘[…] lady gardeners, - a class of amateurs which, in England, numbers many and zealous devotees, even among the highest ranks'
 
The preface to the American edition of Jane Loudon’s book, Gardening for Ladies described women gardeners as ardent lady amateurs whose number included individuals from the highest social classes. Loudon was the author of a number of popular gardening books written for women in the 1840s which inspired many middle-class women to take up gardening in the mid-nineteenth century.  Her texts proffered gardening to women as a way to mitigate, what was for many, a house-bound, constricted lifestyle: an idea which scholars such as Sarah Bilston and feminist critic, Sharon A. Weltman have associated with John Ruskin and the beliefs he outlined in Lecture II – Lilies, of Queens’ Gardens, published in 1865. The ‘territory’ of women’s authority, described by Ruskin as ‘Queens’ Gardens’ was ‘not in their households merely, but over all within their sphere’,  an idea which has been interpreted to mean that women’s activity encompassed a broader and even public realm. Ruskin’s garden space was both ‘home’ and ‘not-home’ in the sense that it encompassed England and wider ‘civilised’ society. Understood in this way, gardening activities in the late nineteenth century provided an acceptable pursuit for women who wished to participate in the public sphere without flouting conventions of respectability. This paper examines how gardening offered wealthy middle-class women like Margaret Beale of Standen new opportunities for artistic expression and social independence.
Dr Anne Stutchbury – Independent researcher/curator

published under the title "City and Nature; the case of the modern country house" in: Gabriele Tagliaventi, Michael Lycoudis, Jean Francois Lejeune (ed.), The Other Modern; building and living the new architecture of the city, Bologna, Italy, 2000.

This article, which introduces a special issue of the JMJS devoted to the study of 'Jewish' country houses edited by Abigail Green, David Rechter and Juliet Carey, heralds the launch of a major collaborative research project, which takes the country houses of the Jewish elite as a starting point for opening up a much broader intellectual agenda at the interface between Jewish history, art history and heritage culture. The introduction aims to give a sense of the chronological and geographical scope of the project, and to open up key themes. What, if anything, was distinctively Jewish about the country houses of the Jewish elite? How does thinking about these houses help us to understand modern Jewish history - and country house studies - differently?

In H. G. Wells’s semi-autobiographical novel, Tono-Bungay (1909), he recounts playing with the eighteenth-century dolls house at Uppark, a country estate in West Sussex where his mother was the housekeeper. Drawing on Nelson Goodman’s Ways of Worldmaking (1978), I argue that Wells remakes his fictional worlds in Tono-Bungay and The Time Machine (1895) from the Uppark dolls house. To unpack the function and symbolism of the dolls house within Wells’s texts, I refer to work by dolls house experts, cultural historians, and Wells scholars. When read together, Tono-Bungay and The Time Machine reveal the material dimensions and history of the dolls house that are at work in both novels. As a small-scale country house, the Uppark dolls house puts into perspective the antiquated paradigms that continue to exert control over the physical, social, and cultural landscapes of England. This is most clear when we consider the dolls house as an off-shoot of the curiosity cabinet, which evolves into the public museum – an evolution reflected in both novels. The dolls house, curiosity cabinet, and country house relate to the potent yet obsolete ideology of the microcosm, which Wells critiques explicitly in Tono- Bungay and implicitly in The Time Machine. The concept of play and the miniature are serious matters for Wells, who knows that small-scale objects can exert great influence on the ‘real’ world, clarifying and amplifying the material conditions that they model. Miniaturization is a high-stakes game – giving us the ability to control, comprehend, and remake our world into a rational paradigm.

Extremely strong ales brewed to celebrate the birth of a heir and designed to be laid down for 21 years and drunk at the heir's coming-of-age party were a feature of aristocratic life in Britain from the early 18th century until just before the First World War. They are mentioned in novels by George Eliot ('Adam Bede') and Elizabeth Gaskell ('Wives and Daughters') but have been missed out of histories of both brewing in Britain and the aristocratic 'big house'.

Lecture given to Dorset Archives Trust, Wimborne Minster, 9th Nov. 2016

This lecture concentrates on exploring the Kingston Lacy estate and the world in and around Kingston Hall in the 1720s, through the various sets of accounts maintained by John Bankes (1692-1772). It considers five different aspects:
• A very brief overview of John Bankes, as a rather overlooked figure in the estate’s history
• The strengths & weaknesses of these accounts as historical sources
• A broad overview of the main trends in John Bankes’ spending in the decade 1720-29
• Details of some of the main categories of expenditure – on family & legacies; on the running of the estate; on John Bankes’ clothes; and on food.
• A few hidden stories of activities, events and individuals that emerge from the detailed study of these records.

Adhering engravings, mezzotints, and ornamental paper borders directly onto walls was an elite eighteenth-century interior design trend. ‘Print rooms’ were commissioned or created by Queen Charlotte, Horace Walpole, Mrs Delany, and aspiring style leaders. This lecture examines this short-lived phenomenon from the contexts of print collecting, craft practice, and commerce; and explores how print rooms were perceived by eighteenth-century audiences.

This video presents, for an audience of students and visitors, the important Athenian inscription in Petworth House, West Sussex. Originally set up on the Acropolis of Athens, it honours the girls who helped make the new robe for the statue of Athena in 108/7 BC.

Mary Sutton Dudley Countess of Home occupied Twickenham Park between 1624 and 1640. She was a cousin of the previous owner, Lucy Harington Russell Countess of Bedford. Lady Home also had a townhouse in Aldersgate, and three houses in Scotland.
In 1640 she moved from Twickenham to 'Lauderdale House' in Highgate.

For an analysis of her furnishings and pastimes see: https://vanishedcomforts.wordpress.com/2017/10/07/closet-and-cabinet/

A public lecture held at Nostell Priory, a country house near Wakefield, West Yorkshire, as part of the 'Electrifying the country house' project.

Abstract:

How did people respond to electric lighting when it was a brand new technology?  How did attitudes differ depending on gender and class?  Who was excited?  Who was scared?

Dr Michael Kay from the University of Leeds will use new, custom-made video and animation content to address these questions, sketching out the Victorian hopes and fears surrounding electrification and examining how electricity was first used in the home at the end of the nineteenth-century.  At that time, electricity was a strange and mysterious force which few understood but many believed could be dangerous.  It was not obvious that everyone would want it in their house! 

This talk is part of the 'Electrifying the Country House' project at the University of Leeds.