Great Houses of England & Wales - Hardcover

Montgomery-Massingberd, Hugh

4.41

39 ratings by Goodreads

9781780672328: Great Houses of England & Wales

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1780672322 ISBN 13: 9781780672328

Publisher: Laurence King Publishing, 2014

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In this chronological selection of thirty-two of the most notable houses in England and Wales, Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd and Christopher Simon Sykes present a panoramic history of the evolution of the 'great house'. Featuring 32 notable residences of England's great families, including Highclere Castle, the real-life Downton Abby, featured on the book's cover. The selection tours acknowledged architectural masterpieces, such as Castle Howard, along with lesser-known delights, such as Tredegar – one of a number of houses in this book that were closed to the public for many years. It is also a history of great families, seen as part of the houses they created, where their descendants, in many cases, still live today. Full of memorable characters and anecdotal insight, this book is a glorious tribute to what Evelyn Waugh called 'our chief national artistic achievement'.

The original photographs show the unexpected as well as the familiar – the private rooms and the servants' quarters as well as the grand exteriors and state rooms, the gardens and noble landscapes. They include some of the most splendid examples of English art and architecture, from awe-inspiring medieval stone to the beauties of the English Renaissance, the classical grandeur of the eighteenth century and the highest excesses of the High Victorian taste; illustrating the work of Inigo Jones, Sir John Vanbrugh, Nicholas Hawksmoor, Thomas Chippendale, William Kent, Robert Adam, and Lancelot 'Capability' Brown.

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About the Author:

Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd began writing about country houses and their owners in the 1960s. The instigator and editor of an index covering some ten thousand country houses in the British Isles, he was also the author of Blenheim Revisited, Family Seats, Great British Families, Royal Palaces of Europe, and (with Christopher Simon Sykes) Great Houses of Scotland, Great Houses of Ireland, and English Manor Houses. He was also well known as a regular contributor of heritage columns to The Field and the Daily Telegraph, and wrote for The Spectator, Town and Country, Harpers & Queen and numerous other magazines. Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd died in 2007.

Christopher Simon Sykes specializes in the photography of architecture and interiors. The author of a number of books including Private Palaces, Black Sheep, Country House Camera and Ancient English Houses, his photographs also appear regularly in many periodicals, including Vogue, Vanity Fair, The World of Interiors, House and Garden, the Telegraph Magazine, and Harpers & Queen. The Big House, a biography of Sledmere, his family's house in Yorkshire, was published in 2013.

Review:

"This large-scale handsome volume is a stunning visual history of the evolution of the 'great house'." - Cotswold Life "History of the 32 most notable great houses of England and Wales, featuring 'Downton Abbey'." - The Bookseller Buyer's Guide

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