Creating Paradise: The Building of the English Country House, 1660-1880

by Richard Wilson

Building or rebuilding their houses was one of the main concerns of the English nobility and gentry, some might say their greatest achievement. This is the first book to look at the building of country houses as a whole. Creating Paradise shows why owners embarked on building programmes, often following the Grand Tour or excursions around other houses in England; where they looked for architectural inspiration and assistance; and how the building work was actually done. It deals not only with great houses, including Holkham and Castle Howard, but also the diversity of smaller ones, such as Felbrigg and Dyrham, and shows the cost not only of building but of decorating and furnishing houses and of making their gardens. Creating Paradise is an important and original contribution to its subject and a highly readable account of the attitude of the English ruling class to its most important possession.

Genres: History

450 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2000

About the author

Richard Wilson is Emeritus Professor of Economic and Social History at the University of East Anglia, Norwich.

Reviews

[Sophie Turner · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is, hands down, the best I have ever read on the building of English country houses. It covers, comprehensively, the who, what, why, when, where, and how of the building of country houses. What you will not find is deep coverage of the evolution of architecture and interior design styles -- this is a book for those who already have a good understanding of them, so if you don't know Baroque from Palladian, it would be good to read up on architecture first to get a full understanding, although it's not absolutely necessary.

Among the most interesting things to me (and there were a lot of them -- I highlighted SO MUCH of this book) was that usually the funds for building or rebuilding a house were not drawn from estate rents. Instead they came from marriage dowries, secondary income from trade or industry, or bonus windfalls that happened to reach a particular generation. Later in the Victorian era, it became more common (in part because of the availability of land) for people to build houses that were more purely a large house in the country, without the surrounding acreage that supported the estate through rents -- they had sources of income from elsewhere.

In reading this I also got some very useful rule-of-thumb numbers: to figure on £1 per acre as income for an estate and the cost of building a country house at a year's income for an estate. Both of these could and did vary wildly, and many houses cost much more, but it gives a good mental base.

It's exceedingly well researched but very readable. Highly recommended for anyone interested in gaining a greater depth of understanding about English country houses.