It was almost as if a rich person couldn’t begin work on a grand house until he had thoroughly disrupted at least a few dozen menial lives. Oliver Goldsmith lamented the practice in a long, sentimental poem, “The Deserted Village,” inspired by a visit to Nuneham Park in Oxfordshire when the first Earl Harcourt was in the process of erasing an ancient village to create a more picturesque space for his new house. Here at least fate exacted an interesting revenge. After completing the work, the earl went for a stroll around his newly reconfigured grounds, but failed to recall where the old
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