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66-783: Dodington Park is a country house and estate in Dodington , South Gloucestershire , England . The house was built by James Wyatt for Christopher Bethell Codrington (of the Codrington baronets ). The family had made their fortune from sugar plantations in the Caribbean and were significant owners of slaves. It remained in the Codrington family until 1980; it is now owned by the British businessman James Dyson . The estate comprises some 300 acres (120 ha) of landscaped park with woods, lakes, lodges,

132-450: A château or a Schloss can be a fortified or unfortified building, a country house, similar to an Ansitz , is usually unfortified. If fortified, it is called a castle, but not all buildings with the name "castle" are fortified (for example Highclere Castle in Hampshire ). The term stately home is subject to debate, and avoided by historians and other academics. As a description of

198-670: A town house . This allowed them to spend time in the country and in the city—hence, for these people, the term distinguished between town and country. However, the term also encompasses houses that were, and often still are, the full-time residence for the landed gentry who dominated rural Britain until the Reform Act 1832 . Frequently, the formal business of the counties was transacted in these country houses, having functional antecedents in manor houses . With large numbers of indoor and outdoor staff, country houses were important as places of employment for many rural communities. In turn, until

264-688: A country house, the term was first used in a poem by Felicia Hemans , "The Homes of England", originally published in Blackwood's Magazine in 1827. In the 20th century, the term was later popularised in a song by Noël Coward , and in modern usage it often implies a country house that is open to visitors at least some of the time. In England, the terms "country house" and "stately home" are sometimes used vaguely and interchangeably; however, many country houses such as Ascott in Buckinghamshire were deliberately designed not to be stately, and to harmonise with

330-482: A development of the 18th century in Great Britain (see Coade stone ), and cast iron balusters a development largely of the 1840s. As balusters and balustrades have evolved, they can now be made from various materials with a few popular choices being timber, glass and stainless steel. The baluster, being a turned structure , tends to follow design precedents that were set in woodworking and ceramic practices, where

396-513: A dower house, an orangery, a church, and a walled kitchen garden. Formal gardens adjoin the main house. The house is Grade I listed on the National Heritage List for England and the landscaped park is Grade II* listed on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens . The dower house , orangery , and St Mary's Church which all adjoin the house are also each individually Grade I listed, as is

462-428: A fortunate few; it was the centre of its own world, providing employment to hundreds of people in the vicinity of its estate . In previous eras, when state benefits were unheard of, those working on an estate were among the most fortunate, receiving secured employment and rent-free accommodation. At the summit of this category of people was the indoor staff of the country house. Unlike many of their contemporaries prior to

528-524: A mixture of high architecture , often as interpreted by a local architect or surveyor, and determined by practicality as much as by the whims of architectural taste. An example of this is Brympton d'Evercy in Somerset, a house of many periods that is unified architecturally by the continuing use of the same mellow, local Ham Hill stone . The fashionable William Kent redesigned Rousham House only to have it quickly and drastically altered to provide space for

594-473: A negotiated price believed to be around £800,000. It was subsequently bought in 2003 by the British inventor and businessman James Dyson for a price believed to be £20 million. The estate was believed to be 300 acres at the time of the 2003 sale. Dyson constructed an underground swimming pool underneath the orangery without planning permission in 2011. The existence of the pool was subsequently revealed to South Gloucestershire planning officers in 2015 after

660-511: A tip off, and Dyson was forced to retrospectively apply for planning permission, which was granted in October 2016. 51°31′1.5″N 2°21′29″W  /  51.517083°N 2.35806°W  / 51.517083; -2.35806 English country houses An English country house is a large house or mansion in the English countryside. Such houses were often owned by individuals who also owned

726-473: Is politics; they talk politics; and they make politics, quite spontaneously. There are no written terms for distinguishing between vast country palaces and comparatively small country houses; the descriptive terms, which can include castle , manor and court , provide no firm clue and are often only used because of a historical connection with the site of such a building. Therefore, for ease or explanation, Britain's country houses can be categorised according to

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792-470: Is the ITV series Downton Abbey . Balustrade The term baluster shaft is used to describe forms such as a candlestick, upright furniture support, and the stem of a brass chandelier. The term banister (also bannister) refers to a baluster or to the system of balusters and handrail of a stairway. It may be used to include its supporting structures, such as a supporting newel post. According to

858-532: The Oxford English Dictionary , "baluster" is derived through the French : balustre , from Italian : balaustro , from balaustra , "pomegranate flower" [from a resemblance to the swelling form of the half-open flower ( illustration, below right )], from Latin balaustrium , from Greek βαλαύστριον ( balaustrion ). The earliest examples of balusters are those shown in the bas-reliefs representing

924-610: The Assyrian palaces, where they were employed as functional window balustrades and apparently had Ionic capitals. As an architectural element alone the balustrade did not seem to have been known to either the Greeks or the Romans , but baluster forms are familiar in the legs of chairs and tables represented in Roman bas-reliefs, where the original legs or the models for cast bronze ones were shaped on

990-468: The Ministry of Works in 1955. An adventure playground for children, a carriage museum and a narrow-gauge railway had been built on the site to attract visitors by the 1970s. The local council denied planning permission to build a pleasure park in 1982, with the decision costing the immediate loss of 20 staff. In the wake of the decision, Sir Simon Codrington said that "Every generation of Codringtons since

1056-500: The Red Fort of Agra and Delhi , in the early seventeenth century. Foliate baluster columns with naturalistic foliate capitals, unexampled in previous Indo-Islamic architecture according to Ebba Koch , rapidly became one of the most widely used forms of supporting shaft in Northern and Central India in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The modern term baluster shaft is applied to

1122-399: The agricultural depressions of the 1870s , the estates, of which country houses were the hub, provided their owners with incomes. However, the late 19th and early 20th centuries were the swansong of the traditional English country house lifestyle. Increased taxation and the effects of World War I led to the demolition of hundreds of houses ; those that remained had to adapt to survive. While

1188-506: The turner's lathe and the potter's wheel are ancient tools. The profile a baluster takes is often diagnostic of a particular style of architecture or furniture, and may offer a rough guide to date of a design, though not of a particular example. Some complicated Mannerist baluster forms can be read as a vase set upon another vase. The high shoulders and bold, rhythmic shapes of the Baroque vase and baluster forms are distinctly different from

1254-509: The 16th century. Wittkower distinguished two types, one symmetrical in profile that inverted one bulbous vase-shape over another, separating them with a cushionlike torus or a concave ring, and the other a simple vase shape, whose employment by Michelangelo at the Campidoglio steps ( c 1546), noted by Wittkower, was preceded by very early vasiform balusters in a balustrade round the drum of Santa Maria delle Grazie ( c 1482), and railings in

1320-502: The 1850s, with the English economy booming, new mansions were built in one of the many revivalist architectural styles popular throughout the 19th century. The builders of these new houses were able to take advantage of the political unrest in Europe that gave rise to a large trade in architectural salvage. This new wave of country house building is exemplified by the Rothschild properties in

1386-419: The 18th century with houses such as Castle Howard , Kedleston Hall and Holkham Hall . Such building reached its zenith from the late 17th century until the mid-18th century; these houses were often completely built or rebuilt in their entirety by one eminent architect in the most fashionable architectural style of the day and often have a suite of Baroque state apartments, typically in enfilade , reserved for

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1452-474: The 20th century, they slept in proper beds, wore well-made adequate clothes and received three proper meals a day, plus a small wage. In an era when many still died from malnutrition or lack of medicine, the long working hours were a small price to pay. As a result of the aristocratic habit of only marrying within the aristocracy, and whenever possible to a sole heiress, many owners of country houses owned several country mansions, and would visit each according to

1518-719: The Bath lodge at the southern part of the estate. The wall, railings and gate piers near the Bath lodge are listed Grade II. Chippenham Lodge and its terrace walls and the northern gateway to Dodington Park are listed Grade II*. The gates and walls surrounding the kitchen garden toward the north of the park are listed Grade II, as is the Garden Cottage. Dodington Park is in the parish of Dodington in South Gloucestershire in South West England . The village of Dodington adjoins

1584-528: The West of the church. The Summer House to the south of the Dower House is listed Grade II. The Cascade Building at the eastern end of the lake is listed Grade II*. The ornamental pigeon loft to the east of the cascade building is listed Grade II. In the formal gardens to the east of the house, a pair of pedestals and urns are listed Grade II, as are an urn and pedestal to the west of the house. The garden ornaments on

1650-467: The best-known examples of the showy prodigy house , often built with the intention of attracting the monarch to visit. By the reign of Charles I , Inigo Jones and his form of Palladianism had changed the face of English domestic architecture completely, with the use of turrets and towers as an architectural reference to the earlier castles and fortified houses completely disappearing. The Palladian style, in various forms, interrupted briefly by baroque ,

1716-423: The bridge and tunnel entries to the north west of the house are listed Grade II. The lodge to the north west of the house is listed Grade II, as are its gate piers and their gates. The stables are listed Grade I, and a barn to the north of the stables is listed Grade II. The walls, piers, and bridge to the west of St Mary's churchyard entrance are listed Grade II, as are the walls and railings and gates attached to

1782-674: The cathedrals of Aquileia ( c 1495) and Parma , in the cortile of San Damaso, Vatican, and Antonio da Sangallo 's crowning balustrade on the Santa Casa at Loreto installed in 1535, and liberally in his model for the Basilica of Saint Peter . Because of its low center of gravity , this "vase-baluster" may be given the modern term "dropped baluster". Balusters may be made of carved stone , cast stone , plaster , polymer , polyurethane / polystyrene , polyvinyl chloride (PVC), precast concrete , wood , or wrought iron . Cast-stone balusters were

1848-520: The circumstances of their creation. The great houses are the largest of the country houses; in truth palaces, built by the country's most powerful – these were designed to display their owners' power or ambitions to power. Really large unfortified or barely fortified houses began to take over from the traditional castles of the crown and magnates during the Tudor period, with vast houses such as Hampton Court Palace and Burghley House , and continued until

1914-513: The country saw the building of the first of the unfortified great houses. Henry VIII 's Dissolution of the Monasteries saw many former ecclesiastical properties granted to the King's favourites, who then converted them into private country houses. Woburn Abbey , Forde Abbey and many other mansions with abbey or priory in their name became private houses during this period. Other terms used in

1980-428: The design of the wing around the next corner. These varying "improvements", often criticised at the time, today are the qualities that make English country houses unique. Wealthy and influential people, often bored with their formal duties, go to the country in order to get out of London, the ugliest and most uncomfortable city in the world; they invented the long week-end to stay away as long as possible. Their métier

2046-427: The early 1970s, hundreds of country houses were demolished . Houses that survived destruction are now mostly Grade I or II listed as buildings of historic interest with restrictions on restoration and re-creation work. However such work is usually very expensive. Several houses have been restored, some over many years. For example at Copped Hall where the restoration started in 1995 continues to this day. Although

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2112-549: The family and their relationship with agriculture and slavery in the West Indies for two centuries were sold in the late 1970s. Dodington Park was the subject of the final episode of the 1981 BBC 2 series Arthur Negus Enjoys in which Arthur Negus and architectural historian John Martin Robinson visited the house. Dodington Park was sold in 1993 to Michael Percival Kent, a Bath based residential homes and commercial developer, for

2178-473: The home counties and Bletchley Park (rebuilt in several styles, and famous for its code-breaking role in World War II). The slow decline of the English country house coincided with the rise not just of taxation, but also of modern industry, along with the agricultural depression of the 1870s. By 1880, this had led some owners into financial shortfalls as they tried to balance maintenance of their estates with

2244-435: The household. These houses were always an alternative residence to a London house. During the 18th and 19th centuries, for the highest echelons of English society, the country house served as a place for relaxing, hunting and running the country with one's equals at the end of the week, with some houses having their own theatre where performances were staged. The country house, however, was not just an oasis of pleasure for

2310-551: The immediately preceding war then in World War I, were now paying far higher rates of tax, and agricultural incomes had dropped. Thus, the solution for many was to hold contents auctions and then demolish the house and sell its stone, fireplaces , and panelling . This is what happened to many of Britain's finest houses. Despite this slow decline, so necessary was the country house for entertaining and prestige that in 1917 Viscount Lee of Fareham donated his country house Chequers to

2376-438: The income they provided. Some relied on funds from secondary sources such as banking and trade while others, like the severely impoverished Duke of Marlborough , sought to marry American heiresses to save their country houses and lifestyles. The ultimate demise began immediately following World War I . The members of the huge staff required to maintain large houses had either left to fight and never returned, departed to work in

2442-451: The inventor of the baluster and credited Giuliano da Sangallo with using it consistently as early as the balustrade on the terrace and stairs at the Medici villa at Poggio a Caiano ( c 1480), and used balustrades in his reconstructions of antique structures. Sangallo passed the motif to Bramante (his Tempietto , 1502) and Michelangelo , through whom balustrades gained wide currency in

2508-484: The landscape, while some of the great houses such as Kedleston Hall and Holkham Hall were built as "power houses" to dominate the landscape, and were most certainly intended to be "stately" and impressive. In his book Historic Houses: Conversations in Stately Homes , the author and journalist Robert Harling documents nineteen "stately homes"; these range in size from the vast Blenheim Palace and Castle Howard to

2574-505: The late 16th century, when it was home to a large gabled Elizabethan house and adjoining church. In the 18th century the family became extremely wealthy from their sugar plantations in the British West Indies (see History of the British West Indies ) and expanded and developed the estate. The grounds of 240 ha were laid out around 1764 by Capability Brown and were modified in 1793 by William Emes and John Webb . The main house

2640-624: The lathe, or in Antique marble candelabra, formed as a series of stacked bulbous and disc-shaped elements, both kinds of sources familiar to Quattrocento designers. The application to architecture was a feature of the early Renaissance architecture : late fifteenth-century examples are found in the balconies of palaces at Venice and Verona . These quattrocento balustrades are likely to be following yet-unidentified Gothic precedents . They form balustrades of colonettes as an alternative to miniature arcading. Rudolf Wittkower withheld judgement as to

2706-540: The latter two are ducal palaces, Montacute, although built by a Master of the Rolls to Queen Elizabeth I, was occupied for the next 400 years by his descendants, who were gentry without a London townhouse , rather than aristocracy. They finally ran out of funds in the early 20th century. However, the vast majority of English country houses, often owned at different times by gentlemen and peers , are an evolution of one or more styles with facades and wings in different styles in

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2772-639: The minuscule Ebberston Hall , and in architecture from the Jacobean Renaissance of Hatfield House to the eccentricities of Sezincote . The book's collection of stately homes also includes George IV's Brighton town palace, the Royal Pavilion . The country houses of England have evolved over the last five hundred years. Before this time, larger houses were usually fortified, reflecting the position of their owners as feudal lords , de facto overlords of their manors . The Tudor period of stability in

2838-416: The most eminent guests, the entertainment of whom was of paramount importance in establishing and maintaining the power of the owner. The common denominator of this category of English country houses is that they were designed to be lived in with a certain degree of ceremony and pomp. It was not unusual for the family to have a small suite of rooms for withdrawing in privacy away from the multitude that lived in

2904-399: The munitions factories, or filled the void left by the fighting men in other workplaces. Of those who returned after the war, many left the countryside for better-paid jobs in towns. The final blow for many country houses came following World War II ; having been requisitioned during the war, they were returned to the owners in poor repair. Many estate owners, having lost their heirs, if not in

2970-468: The names of houses to describe their origin or importance include palace , castle , court , hall , mansion , park , house , manor , and place . It was during the second half of the reign of Elizabeth I , and under her successor, James I , that the first architect-designed mansions, thought of today as epitomising the English country house, began to make their appearance. Burghley House , Longleat House , and Hatfield House are among

3036-450: The nation for the use of a prime minister who might not possess one of his or her own. Chequers still fulfills that need today as do both Chevening House and Dorneywood , donated for sole use of high-ranking ministers of the Crown. Today, many country houses have become hotels, schools, hospitals and museums, while others have survived as conserved ruins, but from the early 20th century until

3102-468: The owner of a "power house" or a small manor, the inhabitants of the English country house have become collectively referred to as the ruling class, because this is exactly what they did in varying degrees, whether by having high political influence and power in national government, or in the day-to-day running of their own localities or "county" in such offices as lord/deputy lieutenant , magistrates , or occasionally even clergy. The Country house mystery

3168-521: The owner's twelve children. Canons Ashby , home to poet John Dryden 's family, is another example of architectural evolution: a medieval farmhouse enlarged in the Tudor era around a courtyard, given grandiose plaster ceilings in the Stuart period , and then having Georgian façades added in the 18th century. The whole is a glorious mismatch of styles and fashions that seamlessly blend together. These could be called

3234-502: The ownership or management of some houses has been transferred to a private trust , most notably at Chatsworth , other houses have transferred art works and furnishings under the Acceptance in Lieu scheme to ownership by various national or local museums, but retained for display in the building. This enables the former owners to offset tax, the payment of which would otherwise have necessitated

3300-456: The placing of the curved orangery in relation to St Mary's church as a "perfect example of Regency picturesque". The church of St Mary adjoining the house is listed Grade I. The Fishing Lodge, listed Grade II, is to the north west of the house. The bridges to the south and the north of the lodge are both Grade II listed, as are the wall and piers to the west of the Fishing Lodge. The walls on

3366-457: The private sale of the art works. For example, tapestries and furniture at Houghton Hall are now owned by the Victoria and Albert Museum . In addition, increasing numbers of country houses hold licences for weddings and civil ceremonies . Another source of income is to use the house as a venue for parties, a film location or a corporate entertainment venue. While many country houses are open to

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3432-467: The public and derive income through that means, they remain homes, in some cases inhabited by the descendants of their original owners. The lifestyles of those living and working in a country house in the early 20th century were recreated in a BBC television programme, The Edwardian Country House , filmed at Manderston House in Scotland. Another television programme which features life in country houses

3498-509: The season: Grouse shooting in Scotland , pheasant shooting and fox hunting in England. The Earl of Rosebery , for instance, had Dalmeny House in Scotland, Mentmore Towers in Buckinghamshire, and another house near Epsom just for the racing season. For many, this way of life, which began a steady decline in 1914, continued well into the 20th century, and for a few continues to this day. In

3564-444: The second category of Britain's country houses are those that belonged to the squirearchy or landed gentry . These tend either to have evolved from medieval hall houses, with rooms added as required, or were purpose-built by relatively unknown local architects. Smaller, and far greater in number than the "power houses", these were still the epicentre of their own estate, but were often the only residence of their owner. However, whether

3630-614: The shaft dividing a window in Saxon architecture. In the south transept of the Abbey in St Albans , England, are some of these shafts, supposed to have been taken from the old Saxon church. Norman bases and capitals have been added, together with plain cylindrical Norman shafts. Balusters are normally separated by at least the same measurement as the size of the square bottom section. Placing balusters too far apart diminishes their aesthetic appeal, and

3696-464: The sixteenth century has fought tooth and nail to keep the estate" with Sr Simon and his wife being reduced to occupying only a single bedroom and kitchen in the house with an electric fire for heating. The estate was put up for sale in October 1983 by estate agents John D. Wood and had sold by the following February at undisclosed price, with offers over £1 million having been sought previously. The Codrington archives which documented three generations of

3762-636: The sixteenth through the seventeenth centuries. Modern baluster design is also in use for example in designs influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement in a 1905 row of houses in Etchingham Park Road Finchley London England. Outside Europe, the baluster column appeared as a new motif in Mughal architecture , introduced in Shah Jahan 's interventions in two of the three great fortress-palaces,

3828-691: The sober baluster forms of Neoclassicism , which look to other precedents, like Greek amphoras . The distinctive twist-turned designs of balusters in oak and walnut English and Dutch seventeenth-century furniture, which took as their prototype the Solomonic column that was given prominence by Bernini , fell out of style after the 1710s. Once it had been taken from the lathe, a turned wood baluster could be split and applied to an architectural surface, or to one in which architectonic themes were more freely treated, as on cabinets made in Italy, Spain and Northern Europe from

3894-551: The south of the house are listed Grade II as is the balustrade to the west. Betteshanger School moved to Dodington Park for the duration of the Second World War. Dodington Park was opened to the public in the 1950s due to the increasing financial pressures on the Codrington family of maintaining the estate. The Times listed the house as open from 1 May to 30 September in the summer of 1955 with entry costing 2 s and 6 d . The house received financial grants for maintenance from

3960-437: The structural integrity of the balustrade they form. Balustrades normally terminate in heavy newel posts, columns, and building walls for structural support. Balusters may be formed in several ways. Wood and stone can be shaped on the lathe, wood can be cut from square or rectangular section boards, while concrete, plaster, iron, and plastics are usually formed by molding and casting. Turned patterns or old examples are used for

4026-488: The true English country house. Wilton House , one of England's grandest houses, is in a remarkably similar vein; although, while the Drydens, mere squires, at Canons Ashby employed a local architect, at Wilton the mighty Earls of Pembroke employed the finest architects of the day: first Holbein , 150 years later Inigo Jones, and then Wyatt followed by Chambers. Each employed a different style of architecture, seemingly unaware of

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4092-611: The western entrance of the estate, which is set on the western edge of the southern Cotswolds . The eastern boundary of the estate is the A46 road , which connects Bath to Stroud , with the northern boundaries bordered by the A432 road from Chippenham to Sodbury. A lane connecting Dodington village to the A46 forms the southern boundary of the estate. The Codrington family acquired the Dodington estate in

4158-511: Was a popular genre of English detective fiction in the 1920s and 1930s; set in the residence of the gentry and often involving a murder in a country house temporarily isolated by a snowstorm or similar with the suspects all at a weekend house party. Following the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century, a third category of country houses was built as newly rich industrialists and bankers were eager to display their wealth and taste. By

4224-513: Was added in 1930. The interior of the house features decorative plasterwork by Francis Bernasconi . The house was listed as being 52,000 square feet (4,800 m) in size at the time of its 2003 sale. A curved orangery with a black and white stone floor adjoins the west of the house, to which it is directly accessed by glass doors. The 1999 Gloucestershire 1: The Cotswolds edition of the Pevsner Architectural Guides , described

4290-415: Was built by James Wyatt between 1798 and 1816 for Christopher Bethell Codrington . It is built in the Roman classical style from Bath stone and has a slate roof. Each facade is different, the south front having seven bays separated by Corinthian pilasters. From the north-west corner of the house, a curving conservatory acts as a covered approach to the church, which was also rebuilt by Wyatt. A formal garden

4356-422: Was to predominate until the second half of the 18th century when, influenced by ancient Greek styles, it gradually evolved into the neoclassicism championed by such architects as Robert Adam . Some of the best known of England's country houses were the work of only one architect/designer, built in a relatively short, particular time: Montacute House , Chatsworth House , and Blenheim Palace are examples. While

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