In an interview on Architectural History

Life in the English Country House.

This is one of those great books. A lovely writer, lovely to read, very elegantly expressed. It was a very, very new idea at the time [the 1970s] to paint the much-loved English country house as social and architectural histories. So, who built it, how it was lived in, how the servants operated, placed very much in the socio-political context of the time, mostly in the 18th century. So, giving familiar buildings a new meaning, looking at these buildings afresh and beginning to understand them. It was hugely inspirational at the time. You don’t just look at the architecture, but also at the lives of the people who made them and occupied them and how the buildings affected life. It seems so obvious but it often hasn’t been done – architectural history with social history.

Which houses does he talk about?

I think he talks about Houghton, Colen Campbell, and about some of the villas of the 1750s. He takes the villa plans and explains how the plan was created for a very specific form of life with parallel worlds. Servants operated at one level, discreet and out of sight, and also for comfort and public entertainment. You’ve got a circuit of interconnected rooms in the house and rooms were given different shapes for variety – square, octagonal, round. You go to these places and you don’t really understand them but this shows how the plan evolves. Take the corridor, for example. We take them for granted but they were a kind of innovation in the 18th century. Traditional houses up to the end of the 17th century tend to have rooms connected one to the other – you walk through a room to get to a room. If you think of Wilton, for example – Inigo Jones was involved – in the 18th century a whole corridor system was added on. If you go to Wilton you’ll see. It simply allows you to go from room to room without passing through. If you think of the Elizabethan house they’re often quite long and thin but you walk through one to get to the other. Take Blenheim, for example, it does add a corridor quite early which becomes a parallel processional room.

Aren’t they like cloisters though?

Well, cloisters are cloisters. If you take Wilton, then what was added is quite cloister-like, as it happens, in the period of gothic revival. But cloisters monastically are separate spaces for contemplation and prayer, they’re not circulation spaces. You can begin to unpick plans with this book and these were changing times with people beginning to think about comfort and convenience. Often you want to get away from the servants and you want different circulation systems, different accommodation. Keep away.