Jacobethan to Modern
John Martin Robinson
The Last Country Houses Clive Aslet (Yale University Press ft 5 )
In conjunction with the publication of Clive Aslet's book, an exhibition on 20th-century country houses has been mounted at Leighton House, resplendent with 'such curious witnesses of a lost age as Princess Louises's (sic) unrivalled collection of toasters — now part of the V & A Boilerhouse collection'. There is in fact on- ly one toaster in the exhibition (which in- cidentally is most entertaining) and that belonged to Princess Alice not Princess Louise. This is a direct quotation from a press release by Yale University Press. Together with the blurb on the jacket, it reveals something of the publishers' at- titude to the subject of country houses they sell well, but are not quite intellectually respectable. It is an irritating attitude.
Country houses of the period 1890-1939 are not quite described as dodos or dinosaurs but they are called mammoths, and lip-smacking emphasis is laid on the fact that they are the 'last monuments of a vanished age'. It could with more truth be
said of 1960's tower blocks of flats that they were the last monuments of a vanished age because nobody builds them anymore whereas lots of people do still build country houses. Yale has hit on a particular package for architectural books and all their authors have to conform to the approved format. This consists of rather more vague 'social history' than architectural fact, enlivened with lots of jolly pictures. It has a slight aura not of `Mariist Art History' but cer- tainly of SDP art history.
Clive Aslet's book was conceived as a conclusion to the admirable series on coun- try houses begun by the late Christopher Hussey in the 1950's. The dates 1890-1939 were chosen to follow on from Mark Girouard's volume on The Victorian Coun- try House (originally published by O.U.P. but recently reprinted by Yale in a less at- tractive format). It was intended to have a similar layout of general introductory chapters followed by 35 or so studies of in- dividual houses. But at the insistence of the publisher this sensible format has been abandoned and replaced by nine thematic chapters devoted to different aspects of the country house. This is unfortunate as the country houses built between 1890 and 1939 are so varied that generalisations tend to be more than usually meaningless and the reader — particularly anyone who has lived through the period — will find himself con- stantly thinking of exceptions. Much better to let people make their own deductions from a number of detailed house studies. The imposed change of format is especially disappointing for those who have followed Mr Aslet's entertaining articles in Country Life and had been looking forward to the same witty and scholarly analyses of houses such as Sir Philip Sassoon's Trent Park, Basil lonides's Buxted Park, John Christie's Glyndebourne, Guy Elwes's Warwick Hall, Sir George Sitwell's altera- tions at Renishaw or the 16th Earl of Der- by's reconstruction of Knowsley by that doyen of smart Edwardian architects — he would not have a telephone in his office W. H. Romaine-Walker.
It could be claimed that one of the most significant architectural developments in the 20th-century country house is the return to the Classical tradition and the triumph of Neo-Georgian over 'Jacobethan'. Tudor- Jacobean, in various guises, had formed the main stream of country house design from the 1830's. This tradition fizzled out in the 1920's after a final efflorescence of marvellous Arts and Crafts houses and jolly Tudor 'fakes' which are entertainingly described here alongside the dream castles of the Astors, Hearsts, Carnegies and Drewes. The preference for Neo-Georgian country houses had an important side-
effect after the Second World War in that it was the country house market which kepi alive the Classical tradition in English ar" cmhonneocptuorleis.edWhile the Modern Movement
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patronage, the owners of counartcryhitheocuttiras! for obvious reasons, stuck to Neo Georgian. Nobody would claim that all the country houses built in England in the, 1950's, 60's and 70's were of artistic Merl', but they do represent a significant corpus of buildings and the best works of Marshall Sisson, Albert Richardson, Ratios Johnson, Philip Jebb, Claud Phillimore: Trenwith Wills, Clough Williams-Ellis and Raymond Erith would certainly fill a f10.- ther volume in the country house series. Now that Classicism is once again fashionable they have come to seem at least assignificant an aspect of post-war ar- chitecture as pre-fabricated primary schools in Hertfordshire and will last longer. Perhaps the main social change in 2001- century country houses has occurred `below i stairs' and one of Mr Aslet's best chapters s that devoted to the 'Servant Question'. He shows how subsequent editions of Mrs Beaton's Household Management form all, Index to the disappearance of servants and the rise of a new domestic technology with electric light, vacuum cleaners, telephones and mechanised laundries. Why did the supply of servants — abundant during the two centuries of Britain's greatest economic expansion and opportunity — suddenly dry up? It is convincingly argued that it was nothing to do with low wages or poor ac- commodation. Many of those in domestic
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service were better paid and better housed than industrial labourers. When the main block at Clouds, in Wiltshire, for instance was burned down Mrs Percy Wyndham was able to write: 'It is a good thing our ar- chitect was a socialist because we find ourselves just as comfortable in the sere vants' quarters as we were in our own.' Th cause of the decline in 'service' seems to have been a changing sense of social status in the working classes. Being clerks or shop' assistants came to seem more respectable than being in domestic service. And so the live-in servants have largely gone, but not I think to the detriment of country house life; Provided that 'the things' are properlY, looked after and people come in to dust an o cook, it is surely much pleasanter especially for the mean tipper — to stay a more-or-less servantless house.
Altogether this is an amusingly
book and contains much information which will, I suspect, be new to most readers. The photographs — some taken specially, some culled from the Country Life archives -- are excellent. My favourite is that of the marble-lined interior of the electric generator house at Ardkinglass.. ,It demonstrates how the domestic electricity supplies had developed in the 20 years since written. pioneer systems like that at Hatfield, where one of the gardeners was accidentally elec. trocuted by the makeshift wiring:
`A smell of burning fills the startled Mr' The electrician is no longer there.'
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