Norfolk is a county sadly rich in "lost" country houses; this account
and gazetteer offer a comprehensive account of them.
Winner of the general non-fiction category in the East Anglian Book
Awards 2016.
The country houses lost from the landscape since the late nineteenth
century exercise a peculiar grip on the English imagination, seeming to
symbolise the passing of a world of taste and elegance, of stability and
deference: a world destroyed by modernity. This important new book
argues that most previous studies of the subject have been characterised
by nostalgia and vagueness, and by a tendency to exaggerate the scale of
the destruction and simplify its causes. It presents a balanced,
systematic analysis of country house losses in Norfolk, discussing the
scale and chronology of destruction. The authors argue that the loss of
great houses was not an entirely new development of the twentieth
century, they explain the varied reasons why houses were abandoned and
destroyed, and they explore the archaeological traces which these
places, their gardens and parks, have left in the modern landscape.
Their arguments are illuminated by a full and lavishly-illustrated
gazetteer.
This book, the results of many years of fieldwork and documentary
research, will be essential reading for all those interested in the
history of the country house, in the development of the post-medieval
landscape, and in the archaeology and history of the county of Norfolk.
Tom Williamson is Professor of Landscape History at the University of
East Anglia; Ivan Ringwood is an independent historical researcher;
Sarah Spooner is Lecturer in Landscape History at the University of East
Anglia.
