I'm Irish, too, Cailin, and no, social class doesn't really translate, does it? And Propelus, I'm absolutely not suggesting that wanting your guests to have a nice time is in any class-dependent or British (I'm not, and I like people to enjoy themselves at my house), but that how that 'nice experience' manifests itself may be class-specific to an extent?
I've lived in England for years, but mostly in London. Now I live in a village in deepest rural England and through contacts from various toddler groups, have seen inside houses that are quite puzzling to me in that they are (at least in the 'public' downstairs areas) almost empty.
My next door neighbours (who have lived in their house for 25 years) have a large front-to-back-of-house living room that is entirely empty bar a three-piece suite and a TV and acres of white carpet, a large dining room that is entirely empty bar a dining table and eight black leather chairs, and, oddest of all to me, a huge kitchen whose work surfaces are completely bare to the extent that when we were given coffee, our neighbour had to retrieve the kettle from a drawer. Nothing on the walls, no bookshelves, no evidence anyone ever cooked or ate or actually lived there - it had that slightly eerie, uninhabited look of a show house.
I'm assuming that the house is as they like it, as they seem to have a lot of money - but I thought for a long time after we moved in next door that it was so empty because they had just renovated/repainted/recarpeted it and hadn't put all their belongings back yet.
We don't live in squalor by any means - we have a cleaner who cleans - but there are rugs on the floorboards, full bookshelves everywhere, shoes on a rack inside the front door, kettle and toaster, mixer and fruit bowls on the work surfaces, plants on windowsills, flowers and books on the kitchen table plus whatever colouring//baking/playdoughing the toddler has been doing, his toys in a basket in the corner, paintings and things on the walls etc.
It's not that we don't like the place to look nice, but 'tidied up' doesn't figure in my definition of looking nice, if you see what I mean. I mean, we had a family of friends over from Paris last weekend, adults and children, and while obviously we prepared two rooms for them to sleep in with clean bedlinen, books, reading lights etc, and cleared a shelf in the bathroom for them, most of our efforts before they actually arrived were in cooking things to eat!
Sorry - essay!