The Gentleman's Country House and Its Plan, 1835-1914

London: Routledge Kegan & Paul, 1981. Book. Near Fine. Hardcover. 1st Edition. 4to - over 9¾ - 12" tall. 10" x 7 1/2", xvi, 279 pages, 74 black and white illustrations, 70 plans. The country houses built between 1835 and 1914 range from architectural masterpieces to the monstrously ugly. Their wealthy patrons, who were as likely to be self-made manufacturers as landed gentry, used their money to build for themselves a perfect setting for a now extinct way of life, based on an army of domestic servants. The Gentleman's Country House and its Plan describes how Victorian and Edwardian country houses were planned and lived in, using a fascinating range of both architectural and literary sources. It makes clear how each house was designed to accommodate the various hierarchies within the household, and the rigid social conventions of the time. Though family and guests were helplessly dependent on the servants, they insisted that the servants should live entirely segregated and virtually invisible lives. Children were relegated to the nurseries, smokers to the smoking room, bachelors to the bachelor wing. Architects also had to provide for modern comfort, which included not only plentiful WCs but also central heating and unsmoky chimneys. So plans had to be drawn up with great skill to ensure that everything happened in the right place at the right time. As this book shows, a study of the plans can bring to life a lost social world. Illustrated throughout with drawings and photographs, most of them contemporary, the book includes a collection of plans of seventy houses representing the work of a large number of architects, together with a description of the various types of plan - classical, mediaeval, freely planned and so on - and a critical assessment of how well the individual houses worked. Hb, near fine in very good, price-clipped dw. .