The brilliantly restored St. Giles House, in the idyllic Dorset countryside, offers high-point Georgian architecture and interiors that bridge many historical styles.

The 12th Earl of Shaftesbury, 39-year-old Nicholas Ashley-Cooper, invites the reader into the house that his family has called home since the fifteenth century. In recent years, his award-winning restoration has brought the house back to life, transforming exquisite spaces that honor the past while being suited to twenty-first-century living. English country-house splendor, through the hands of some of the world’s top artisans and craftspeople, returns to the house in the form of re-created wallpapers, customized paints, revived furniture from the Georgian and Victorian periods, reworked antique Brussels tapestries, restored plasterwork and textiles, and a complete overhaul of the landscape, with its sunken garden, woodlands, avenue of beeches, lake, and shell-encrusted grotto.

With stories of noteworthy architecture, beautiful interiors, and centuriesof a single family’s involvement in British and world history, this book will appeal to devotees of country living, the aristocratic life, historic houses, and English interior design.

About the Author:

The 12th Earl of Shaftesbury, Nicholas Ashley-Cooper, is an English peer and philanthropist. Tim Knox is a British art historian and director of the Royal Collection Trust. Justin Barton is a London-based photographer.

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Пролистать книгу The Rebirth of an English Country House: St Giles House

Living today in the houses of the English countryside, owners blend contemporary style with the old, good bones of manor houses and country seats, redefining the notion of English country and creating interiors that are both chic and intimate.

English country house style looms large in the collective imagination, inspiring fantasies of life in a centuries-old manor house, overlooking verdant hills dotted with sheep. This book allows us to enter some of the most exceptional of England's historic houses that are lived in and decorated for today by their imaginative owners and designers. Jeremy Musson and Hugo Rittson Thomas have assembled a stunning collection of twenty charming homes that reveal a remarkable wealth of taste and style inspiration, both inside and out, ranging from traditional and classic to contemporary and bohemian, with examples including Haddon Hall, Smedmore, Court of Noke, and The Laskett.

Musson's text illuminates the history of each home, showing how each has become a canvas upon which its owner has deeply imprinted their personality. Essays on furniture, gardens, and color expand upon three essential components of country style. Rittson Thomas's superb photography captures the telling details in natural-lit interiors and exquisite gardens. This volume is sure to appeal to Instagram fanatics and traditionalists alike.

About the Authors:

Jeremy Musson is an expert on the British country house and author of twenty books. He was the architectural editor of Country Life magazine for many years and remains a regular contributor. Hugo Rittson Thomas is a portrait photographer of many high-profile subjects, including the British royal family. His work has been published in books such as Secret Gardens of the Cotswolds and Great Gardens of London.

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Пролистать книгу Romantics and Classics: Style in the English Country House

Interior designer Edward Bulmer breathes new life into centuries-old houses with a sympathy that is rooted in a deep understanding of the past, transforming them into comfortable homes designed for modern living.

Edward Bulmer is part of a new generation of designers working on historical houses with an eye on designs that appeal to contemporary families and active lifestyles while at the same time respecting the classical traditions that have made the British country house style so popular today. With a modern eye, Bulmer combines his love for the well-worn and timeless with natural textures as well as rich new color palettes and finishes, as embodied by his line of all-natural, toxic-free paints that embrace both traditional and eclectic tastes. 

In his first book, Bulmer takes readers on in-depth tours of his work in some of Britain’s grandest homes, including Althorp, Goodwood, Pitshill House, and Broughton Hall, along with his work for private clients, highlighting his own stunning home, a Queen Anne manor house built in 1700. Bulmer and his family have spent the last twenty years turning this country farmhouse into a comfortable, practical home — with a working organic farm — that perfectly accommodates the demands of contemporary living. It has become a laboratory for his design practice and is also the base for his paint company, which he operates out of an old granary converted into a studio.

About the Authors:

Edward Bulmer is an interior designer, architectural historian, and founder of Edward Bulmer Natural Paint, a popular line of all-natural environmentally friendly paints. He has been named to House & Garden’s Top 100 Interior Designers, and in 2019 the magazine named his Pitshill House restoration as Project of the Year. The Duchess of Richmond resides at Goodwood, which has been in the family since the late seventeenth century. Photographer Paul Whitbread is based in the Cotswolds and has worked with noted interior designers, boutique hotels, and luxury brands. His images have appeared in Architectural Digest India, House & Garden, The English Home, and Homes & Antiques.

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Пролистать книгу The Colourful Past: Edward Bulmer and the English Country House

A highly detailed look at the English country house interior, offering unprecedented access to England’s finest rooms. In this splendid book, renowned historian Jeremy Musson explores the interiors and decoration of the great country houses of England, offering a brilliantly detailed presentation of the epitome of style in each period of the country house, including the great Jacobean manor house, the Georgian mansion, and the Gothic Revival castle. For the first time, houses known worldwide for their exquisite architecture and decoration -- including Wilton, Chatsworth, and Castle Howard -- are seen in unprecedented detail. With intimate views of fabric, gilding, carving, and furnishings, the book will be a source of inspiration to interior designers, architects, and home owners, and a must-have for anglophiles and historic house enthusiasts.

The fifteen houses included represent the key periods in the history of English country house decoration and cover the major interior fashions and styles. Stunning new colour photographs by Paul Barker-who was given unparalleled access to the houses-offer readers new insights into the enduring English country house style. Supplementing these are unique black-and-white images from the archive of the esteemed Country Life magazine.  

Among the aspects of these that the book covers are: paneling, textile hangings (silks to cut velvet), mural painting, plasterwork, stone carving, gilding, curtains, pelmets, heraldic decoration, classical imagery, early upholstered furniture, furniture designed by Thomas Chippendale, carved chimney-pieces, lass, use of sculpture, tapestry, carpets, picture hanging, collecting of art and antiques, impact of Grand Tour taste, silver, use of marble, different woods, the importance of mirror glass, boulle work, English Baroque style, Palladian style, neo-Classical style, rooms designed by Robert Adam, Regency, Gothic Revival taste, Baronial style, French 18th century style, and room types such as staircases, libraries, dining rooms, parlors, bedrooms, picture galleries, entrance halls and sculpture galleries.

Houses covered include: Hatfield - early 1600s (Jacobean); Wilton - 1630/40s (Inigo Jones); Boughton - 1680/90s (inspired by Versailles); Chatsworth -1690/early 1700s (Baroque); Castle Howard - early 1700s (Vanbrugh); Houghton - 1720s (Kent); Holkham - 1730s-50s (Palladian); Syon Park - 1760s (Adam); Harewood -  1760s/70s (neo-Classical); Goodwood - 1790s/1800s (neo-Classical/Regency); Regency at Chatsworth/Wilton/C Howard etc - 1820/30s; Waddesdon Manor - 1870/80ss (French Chateau style); Arundel Castle -1880s/90s (Gothic Revival); Berkeley Castle -1920/30s (period recreations and antique collections); Parham House - 1920s/30s (period restorations and antique collections). The range is from the early 17th century to present day, drawn from the authenticated interiors of fifteen great country houses, almost all still in private hands and occupied as private residences still today. The book shows work by twentieth-century designers who have helped evolve the country house look, including Nancy Lancaster, David Hicks, Colefax & Fowler, and David Mlinaric

About the Authors:

Jeremy Musson is a leading commentator and author on the English country house. He was architectural editor of Country Life from 1998 to 2007, for which he wrote hundreds of articles on country houses and is still a contributor. As a former National Trust assistant curator he redecorated state rooms at Ickworth Park and curated Anglesey Abbey. Musson is the author of several books including The English Manor House, Plasterwork, How to Read a Country House, The Country Houses of Sir John Vanbrugh, and Up and Down Stairs: The History of the Country House Servant. A contributor to World of Interiors, The British Art Journal, and Cornerstone, he has interviewed many figures in the world of heritage, arts, and interior design, and he co-wrote and presented The Curious House Guest, a BBC2 series on important country houses in 2005-2006. Art historian Sir Roy Strong is the former director of London’s National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Paul Barker is one of the U.K.’s leading architectural photographers.

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Пролистать книгу English Country House Interiors

The English Country House takes a look at the architecture and interiors of sixty-two stunning houses in a range of architectural styles spanning seven centuries - from the medieval Stokesay Castle to the newly built, Lutyens-inspired Corfe Farm - brought to life through the world-renowned photography library of Country Life. More than four hundred color and black and white illustrations provide an insight into the architecture, decoration, gardens, and landscape settings of these houses, which are set into their architectural and historical context by the accompanying text and extended captions.

The book provides an entrée into the houses to which Country Life has had privileged access over the years, many of which are still private homes, often occupied by descendants of the families that built them. Punctuating the book at intervals in the form of booklets on rich, uncoated paper are six essays by leading British architectural historians that set the English country house into its social context and chart the changing tastes in decorating and collecting, the development of ancillary buildings, gardens and landscapes, and finally, its influence in the United States. 

About the Authors:

Mary Miers is architectural writer, arts and books editor for Country Life. Her previous career was in architectural conservation, and she established and ran Scotland's Buildings at Risk Register in the 1990s.  Her books include The Western Seaboard: An Illustrated Architectural Guide and American Houses: The Architecture of Fairfax & Sammons.  Her home is in the Highlands of Scotland. 

This stunning volume provides an enchanting visit to one of the most storied and beautiful English country houses.

No place embodies the spirit of the English country house better than Chatsworth. From best-selling books such as Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire and Chatsworth: The House by Deborah Mitford, the late Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, American audiences have long been transfixed by this remarkable place and its extraordinary collection of art and decorative objects.

Today, Chatsworth’s facade is newly cleaned and its windows freshly gilded. The forward-looking current Duke of Devonshire, who likes to say that “everything was new once,” has redone the public and private rooms. This tour-de-force volume is his telling of the story of Chatsworth through seven historical periods accompanied by stunning photographic portraits of the house, its collections, and the grounds.

Chatsworth contains countless treasures from Nicolas Poussin’s Et in Arcadia Ego and Antonio Canova’s Endymion to seminal modern works by Lucian Freud and David Hockney. Though filled with works from different time periods, the collection represents the very best of the “new” from each artistic era.

About the Authors:

John-Paul Stonard is an art historian educated at the Courtauld Institute of Art and contributes to the London Review of Books and Times Literary Supplement. The Duke and Duchess of Devonshire reside at Chatsworth, home to the family since 1549. Victoria Hely-Hutchinson is a photographer whose work has appeared in Dazed & Confused, New York, the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Vogue, and the Wall Street Journal Magazine.

There is something special about the English country house garden: from its quiet verdant lawns to its high yew hedges, this is a style much-desired and copied around the world. 

The English country house is most often conceived as a private, intimate place, a getaway from working life. A pergola, a sundial, a croquet lawn, a herbaceous border of soft planting; here is a space to wander and relax, to share secrets, and above all to enjoy afternoon tea. But even the most peaceful of gardens also takes passion and hard work to create. 

This new book takes a fresh look at the English country house garden, starting with the owners and the stories behind the making of the gardens. 

Glorious photographs capture the gardens at their finest moments through the seasons, and a sparkling and erudite text presents twenty-five gardens - some grand, some personal, some celebrated, some never-before-photographed - to explore why this garden style has been so very enduring and influential. From the Victorian grandeur of Tyntesfield and Cragside, to the Arts & Crafts simplicity of Rodmarton Manor and Charleston; from Scampston, in the same family since the 17th century, to new gardens by Dan Pearson and Tom Stuart-Smith; and with favourites such as Hidcote and Great Dixter alongside new discoveries, this book will be a delicious treat for garden-lovers.

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Пролистать книгу The English Country House Garden на Google Books.

Ranging from Kentchurch Court, a former fortified medieval manor house that has been the seat of the Scudamore family for nearly 1,000 years, to a delightful Strawberry Hill-style Gothic house in rural Cornwall to a ducal palace (Badminton) to car-crazed Goodwood House, this beautifully illustrated book showcases ten outstanding British country houses all still in the hands of descendants of the original owners.

James Peill recounts the ups and downs of such deep-rooted clans as the Cracrofts, landowners in Lincolnshire since the twelfth century, whose late 18th-century Hackthorn Hall is a perfect example of the kind of house Jane Austen describes in her novels (indeed, she appears on their family tree), as well as the relatively newly arrived Biddulphs, who constructed Rodmarton, an Arts & Crafts masterpiece, in the first decades of the last century.

James Fennell has once again provided superb photographs of a wealth of gardens, charming interiors, bygone sporting trophies, fine art collections and fanciful family memorabilia, making The English Country House a delicious treat for Anglophiles and lovers of old houses.

A highly detailed look at the most accomplished English country house interiors, exemplifying English decorating at its best.

The English drawing room, a formal place within a house of status where family and honored guests could retire from the more public arena, is one of the most important rooms in an English country house, and thus great attention has been paid to preserving the decoration of this most elegant of spaces: the center of life in the English countryside and the epitome of English country house decoration.

This book offers privileged access to fifty of the finest drawing rooms of country houses and historic townhouses—many still in private hands—including Althorp, Attingham, and Knepp Castle.

Through these sumptuous rooms, readers experience a history of English decorating from the sixteenth century to the present day, including the work of design legends such as David Hicks, Nancy Lancaster, John Fowler, and David Mlinaric.

Specially commissioned photographs capture the entirety of each room, as well as details of furniture, architectural elements, artwork, collections, and textiles, creating a visually seductive book that will inspire interior designers and homeowners interested in the widely popular classic English look.

There is something special about the English country house garden: from its quiet verdant lawns to its high yew hedges, this is a style much-desired and copied around the world.

The English country house is most often conceived as a private, intimate place, a getaway from working life, and here you will see gardens with meandering walks amongst greenery and contemplative pools of water. A sundial, a pergola, a croquet lawn, a herbaceous border of soft planting; here is a space to share secrets, to wander and relax, and above all to enjoy English afternoon tea.

But even the most peaceful of gardens also take passion and hard work to create. This new book takes a fresh look at the English country house garden, starting with the owners and the stories behind the making of the gardens.

With spectacular photos by Marcus Harpur, the text presents thirty gardens - some grand, some personal, some celebrated, some never-before-photographed - to explore why this garden style has been so very enduring and influential.

From the Victorian grandeur of Tyntesfield and Cragside, to the Arts & Crafts simplicity of Rodmarton Manor and Charleston; from Scampston, in the same family since the 17th century, to new gardens by Dan Pearson, Tom Stuart-Smith and the Bannermans; and with favourites such as Hidcote and Great Dixter alongside new discoveries, this book will be a delicious treat for garden-lovers.

The great English country house tradition reached its apotheosis in the nineteenth century. Designed by all the most eminent architects of the age, houses constructed during this period were larger, more elaborate, and more lavishly furnished than ever before, and they became famous throughout Europe and America for their luxury, technological innovation, and convenience of plan.

Michael Hall's survey draws on the vast archive of the great British magazine Country Life to present the fullest visual record yet published of the Victorian-era country house in England and Wales. It ranges from the High Gothic of Tyntes?eld to Ferdinand Rothschild's ?amboyantly French Waddesdon Manor and Philip Webb's Arts and Crafts interiors at Standen. These remarkable photographs are in many cases the only record of the great houses in their heyday; those such as Wrest Park, Thoresby Hall, and Hewell Grange were all sold in the twentieth century and their magni?cent furniture and priceless artwork and collections dispersed. Houses that have survived with their interiors intact but are little known or rarely accessible to the public also feature prominently, such as Flintham Hall and the Earl of Harrowby's Sandon Hall.

Spectacular color photographs provide a fascinating look at some of the most celebrated houses of the period, from A. W. N. Pugin's Scarisbrick Hall and William Burges's Cardiff Castle to J. F. Bentley's Carlton Towers and J. D. Crace's astonishing interiors at Longleat. This chronologically arranged survey of Victorian houses spans the decades from the 1830s to the 1890s and includes not only new houses, but also historic county seats that have been in families for generations and were given major renovations or additions in this era. With over 150 superb color and black-and-white photographs specially selected to highlight the century's most signi?cant houses and their architects and an authoritative commentary by Michael Hall, this book provides a thorough overview of a major period in British architectural history.

The English House is a vivid photographic tour of the private homes and lifestyles of the storied English countryside that offers England's rich span of architectural and interior styles as wonderfully inspiring and intriguing examples of current influential decorating trends. Whether a charming and humble cottage or a grand Georgian and Palladian manor house, all the homes featured in this stunning book illustrate the epitome of styles that define the English house.

The delightful text details each house's quirks while highlighting the decorating approaches and design ideas-startling juxtapositions, new takes on tradition, witty visual puns, and bold new combinations. This is an ideal book for any anglophile and is equally appealing to anyone with an interest in interior decoration, with many design ideas that easily translate into interiors on either side of the Atlantic.

About the Author:

Sally Griffiths started writing after her own home was featured in British House & Garden 20 years ago. She runs a photo library called Red Cover and is the author of The English Country Cottage.