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An English country house is a large house or mansion in the English countryside. Such houses were often owned by individuals who also owned a town house. This allowed them to spend time in the country and in the city—hence, for these people, the term distinguished between town and country. However, the term also encompasses houses that were, and often still are, the full-time residence for the landed gentry who ruled rural Britain until the
Reform Act 1832 The Representation of the People Act 1832 (also known as the 1832 Reform Act, Great Reform Act or First Reform Act) was an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom (indexed as 2 & 3 Will. IV c. 45) that introduced major changes to the electo ...
. Frequently, the formal business of the counties was transacted in these country houses, having functional antecedents in
manor houses A manor house was historically the main residence of the lord of the manor. The house formed the administrative centre of a manor in the European feudal system; within its great hall were held the lord's manorial courts, communal meals with ...
. With large numbers of indoor and outdoor staff, country houses were important as places of employment for many rural communities. In turn, until the agricultural depressions of the 1870s, the estates, of which country houses were the hub, provided their owners with incomes. 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. While a
château A château (; plural: châteaux) is a manor house or residence of the lord of the manor, or a fine country house of nobility or gentry, with or without fortifications, originally, and still most frequently, in French-speaking regions. No ...
or a '' Schloss'' can be a fortified or unfortified building, a country house, similar to an ''
Ansitz An ''Ansitz'' is a small residence designed for the lower nobility of the Germanic Alpine region. History The concept of ''Ansitz'' dates back to the end of the Middle Ages up to the 19th century. Unlike castles, they were hardly fortified. ...
'', is usually unfortified. If fortified, it is called a castle, but not all buildings with the name "castle" are fortified (for example Highclere Castle in
Hampshire Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in western South East England on the coast of the English Channel. Home to two major English cities on its south coast, Southampton and Portsmouth, Hampshire ...
).


Stately homes of England

The term ''stately home'' is subject to debate, and avoided by historians and other academics. As a description of a country house, the term was first used in a poem by Felicia Hemans, "The Homes of England", originally published in '' Blackwood's Magazine'' in 1827. In the 20th century, the term was later popularised in a song by Noël Coward, and in modern usage it often implies a country house that is open to visitors at least some of the time. In England, the terms "country house" and "stately home" are sometimes used vaguely and interchangeably; however, many country houses such as Ascott in Buckinghamshire were deliberately designed not to be stately, and to harmonise with the landscape, while some of the great houses such as Kedleston Hall and
Holkham Hall Holkham Hall ( or ) is an 18th-century country house near the village of Holkham, Norfolk, England, constructed in the Neo-Palladian style for the 1st Earl of Leicester,The Earldom of Leicester has been, to date, created seven times. Thomas ...
were built as "power houses" to dominate the landscape, and were most certainly intended to be "stately" and impressive. In his book ''Historic Houses: Conversations in Stately Homes'', the author and journalist Robert Harling documents nineteen "stately homes"; these range in size from the vast Blenheim Palace and Castle Howard to the minuscule Ebberston Hall, and in architecture from the Jacobean Renaissance of Hatfield House to the eccentricities of Sezincote. The book's collection of stately homes also includes George IV's Brighton town palace, the Royal Pavilion.


Evolution

The country houses of England have evolved over the last five hundred years. Before this time, larger houses were usually fortified, reflecting the position of their owners as
feudal lords Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was the combination of the legal, economic, military, cultural and political customs that flourished in medieval Europe between the 9th and 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of structur ...
, ''de facto'' overlords of their manors. The
Tudor period The Tudor period occurred between 1485 and 1603 in England and Wales and includes the Elizabethan period during the reign of Elizabeth I until 1603. The Tudor period coincides with the dynasty of the House of Tudor in England that began wit ...
of stability in the country saw the building of the first of the unfortified great houses. Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries saw many former
ecclesiastical {{Short pages monitor