The National Trust: Historic Houses of Britain

Great Britain's National Trust protected and maintained 200 country homes in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland as of 1992, when "The National Trust: Historic Houses of Britain" was written. Adrian Tinniswood provides a history of 30 of the most significant houses, the people who commissioned them, and the architects who designed them, organized by era. He begins by explaining how The National Trust came to play this role subsequent to the crisis in these great homes created by taxes, falling land prices, and changing social structure that left many homes stripped of their contents or worse. In the late-1930s, The National Trust began to acquire country houses. Beginning in the late Middle Ages up until the last country home was built in Britain in 1931, Tinniswood takes the reader on a tour of the evolving architecture of great country homes through words and 150 color and black-and-white images. Each section begins with a discussion of the architectural features of the period and why they came about. Then, for each home, Tinniswood relates the circumstances under which it was built, the home's owner, its architect, and its particular architectural features, concentrating on the era that the house most represents. Of course, these houses were altered and redecorated along the way. A summary of those changes is usually found at the end of each house's description. The historical periods are: "Moats and Manor Houses 1250-1550" (5 houses). "Proud Ambitious Heaps 1550-1630" (5 houses), "Pomp and Circumstance 1630-1720" (7 houses), "The Grandeur That Was Rome 1720-1820" (7 houses), and "Irregular in Parts" 1820-1930" (6 houses). Tinniswood doesn't favor or deride and era. He writes literately and admiringly of them all. The last section of this book lists all of the houses of The National Trust alphabetically, with brief descriptions. For additional insight into the how changing socio-economic needs informed the architecture of country homes and the composition of their households, Mark Girouard's Life in the English Country House would be an excellent companion volume.