Take a tour...
National Trust
If you are to the manor born, you can find the cost of maintaining the family castle downright ignoble. As a result, some owners of British estates are opening their doors to lucrative private tours—and even sleepovers—for history buffs and antiques connoisseurs.
Oxburgh Hall
If you have the chance, get and watch the three DVD set of PBS's Manor House. The very highest marks on this one. Nineteen volunteers from modern Britain move into a manor house (Manderston) on the Scottish border. A family, the Ollif-Coopers, move in as landed gentry and the owners of Manderston while the others are the "downstairs" staff, a euphemism for servants, ranging from the Butler on down to the Scullery Maid. It was an eye-opener for me and explains a lot about Britain (hence, Socialism), things I never thought about really until now. I intend to cover some of those things in more depth in the coming days, maybe this weekend.
A delightful timber-frame house offers insights into the realities of luxurious 15th-century living and the brutal complexities of Lancastrian politics, as John Goodall explains.
We explore Waddesdon Manor, the sumptuous late 19th-century chateau built by Ferdinand de Rothschild that is a treasure trove of grand 18th-century art.
At Erdigg Hall, a period home in Wales, there was no vast chasm between family and servants
Anxiously awaiting the new season of Downton Abbey? (Us, too.) Get your posh-period-piece fix with this slide show of stately piles and sumptuous interiors from such beloved films as Howards End and Jane Eyre
Explore Phil Masters' 18450 photos on Flickr!
The most important English estate to hit the open market this year is Kiddington Manor in Oxfordshire
Waddesdon Manor is a National Trust country house in Buckinghamshire, built in the late 19th Century by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild of the wealthy Rothschild family. Buckinghamshire is quite a dr…
Over the past half century, the care of an American university has returned one of the landmark buildings of early Victorian England to life and splendour. John Goodall reports.
