Did forebears of yours live in a grand country pile?

[Timpeall]

Be it a Highclere Castle type affair, a minor country estate in Somerset, maybe some kind of Tudor manor house.

I'm watching The Little Stranger which is set post-WWII and shows a family who can very much not afford to keep the family seat going. It's all dust and decay and slogging away doing their own cooking and cleaning.* God, it's so depressing watching these people in their ramshackle home with the days of former splendour still in living memory. They don't have so much as a ladies maid to throw a hairbrush at anymore.

And I know these houses could only exist for so long because they were able to exploit their servants by paying them two shillings and thrupence and only giving them a half Sunday's holiday every six weeks. But it's still quite poignant.

And then I thought, there must be lots of people living in nice comfy four bed semi-detached houses whose ancestors at some point lived in some seriously impressive gaffs. Do they have framed sepia pictures of the old ancestral pile on the wall?

*These poor buggers also have the added hassle of some ghostly demon.

I always imagine I’d love to be an estate manager to be able to live in a huge place like that. If I had loads of money I’d buy one and run immersive experience weekends where you dress up as gentry and play at pride and prejudice balls etc, have servants lighting your fire in your room etc.

My sister is researching our ancestry, and recently found out that The Grey Lady of Glamis is our twelve-times great grandmother.

So, yeah. Glamis Castle. Though it didn’t end well, which probably explains why we grew up in a council house

When I was a kid in the 70s the old couple two doors away had a live in maid still.
A bit like Mrs Bird from the Paddington stories.

As a butler

Yes on my husband’s side. His father’s great uncle was a wealthy wool merchant who built one of the first model villages.

Mine were all northern mill workers or Irish farm labourers as far back as I can trace. Who Do You Think You Are would pass me by I think!

Yes. It’s still in the family, and has ruined more than one marriage because its absolutely minimal upkeep is still a phenomenal expense, and yet keeping it is a priority.

As a child I loved it, but as an adult I prefer a loo that doesn’t need a bucket to flush it.

@springdale1 would you consider doing an AMA thread? Your job is really interesting.

Dp did, sold a generation ago. My grandmothers older sister was in service!

They still do. It was handy when I got married.

Yes Blaise Castle estate in Bristol on one side and a Duke on another. The estate wasn't inherited to my however many great grandma due to being a girl and not a boy and the title and those lands were gambled away

Blaise Castle!! What a beautiful place! Crazy that people could lose their homes just for being the wrong sex

@CatsAndDogsAndHorses

How do you all know all this? I mean I’ve looked at records, but beyond couple of generations, it begins to get hazy very quickly.

For one thing, rich and/powerful families, particularly titled ones attached to the same historically-significant house and lands, are much easier to track because they’re written about in county histories and peerages etc, and baptisms, marriages and burials will often be in the same church etc.

But you don’t even have to be enormously rich or landed. All I know about my own forebears peters out, as you say, after a few generations — they were illiterate landless labourers, by and large, and the records are few.

But we’ve recently moved into a substantial Victorian house, and simply from searching for its (unusual) name online, I’ve found family tree research from a descendant of the upper-middle-class professional man for whom it was built in 1857, and whose family it stayed in until the early 1970s, and (in part because of what that man did for a living, which was particularly well-documented, in part because many of the family founded local businesses and institutions, one was a fairly well-known artist, and because they were wealthy enough to have a lot of photos taken), I now know far more about this family than I do about my own, much poorer one.

Which is depressing, but not surprising.

@Pluas we have an unusual name which makes it easier to trace . My dad’s uncle has tracked us back to the gunpowder plot.

Yes on my father's side one reliable gambled it all away on cards. Left penniless, house and contents taken for the debt.

Bet his wife and kids were really pleased.

My MIL's family has been v rich industrialist types, but her branch has always been second sons or the not quite so successful ones. But, there is a large 7 figure trust fund apparently and she's now living on that.

Not a castle or grand house, but if you go back a 5x G grandfather was adopted into a manor house/country hall type family. Presumably they couldn't have children hence the adoption and he was their only child.

No idea what happened because by the time you get to 3xG and 4xG grandparents they're back to being minors and farm hands.

Nothing of the kind, though one relative had a street named after them, when their former neighbour sold his land and six houses were built on it. No-one told the relative's widow who only found out from someone else when they sent a Christmas card.

The old lady I care for was daughter to the butler of a stately home, and the landowners were childless so 'borrowed' this pretty blond girl I presume to accessorise? So she went on trips to Harrods and was treated to new outfits etc. as though one of the family. Sadly the gentleman died, the estate went on the market after being requisitioned during the war (remaining family moved out to the sticks to a rented property taking the butler & family) and the house became offices.

No, mainly honest hard working stock apart from when I questioned my great aunt many moons ago, she said her grandmother was a proper lady.
They owned an Inn on Burntisland in Scotland and that she was friend of Queens Victoria’s youngest daughter Princess Beatrice.

Not exactly castle Howard I know but it was a nice place to visit and ruminate about the fact that some of my ancestors may not have had it too hard.
Unlike mums side..when they came from Ireland to Liverpool to work in the docks.
Then up here to my ne coastal town. My great grandfather had 8 children and died of pneumonia when he was only 39...they lived in a tiny house and the youngest children including my grandma had to go into the workhouse.
My nan went into service aged 14

No, my ancestors were the gardeners for this kind of house. I didn't realise this was a film, going to watch it now - loved the book.

No - but slightly unusual story which we don't know the full picture of. My father was born out of wedlock which in the 1930s would have been seen as not appropriate. She was in service and apparently the house she worked at tried very hard to persuade her for them to look after and adopt her child. She kept him and he was baptised (unusual) as very often the children of unmarried mothers were turned away.). We don't know the full picture of who my genetic grandfather actually was - but I think it was connected to the house that she worked in. My grandmother died not revealing who my father's father was. It saddens him to this day.

Yes, xxxxx Hall in Ireland.
The daughter of the house married my ancestor who was not massively wealthy. We think he owned a retail business or something.

Yes, my ancestors lived in a famous castle that is now a major tourist attraction. Also descended more distantly from others in the posh country house diaspora.

DH's family still live in a 'big house' in Ireland. It's been the cause of many a family feud and an albatross round the neck of any who inherit it.

My family have a big country hotel/inn my grandad grew up in, I don't know how old it is, at least Victorian. He wasn't the eldest so didn't inherit. After his eldest brother died, his daughter inherited it. She now runs it with her kids.

Yes, lost it three generations ago, it's now a tourist attraction. I'm glad I don't have to make it pay or pay to heat it.