To hate stately homes and castles now?

[Allsorts1]

When I was younger I would love visiting stately homes, gardens and castles with my parents - learning about all the history and the inhabitants and generally imagining myself to be a princess lol.

Now when I go to these places I just feel a bit eye rolly and bitter, thinking about how corrupt and awful the aristocratic system must have been and how I’m so happy to not be living in that time. I find myself not particularly interested in the history of it as it’s usually “very rich person gifted a large parcel of land by some other landed gentry, blah blah blah”

Like yes, I can see that in some ways as a culture we did need concentrated wealth to create these beautiful buildings in the first place, but I’m very glad that this system has been dismantled now.

Just wondering if anyone else is bothered by conflicted feelings when visiting stately homes?

@poblwc

I always quite enjoy imagining what the original owners would think about all these plebs milling around their house...

DH and I once cried laughing when taking DC’s for a nature wee at some posh stately home on the Isle of Wight.

Here are the local povs pissing in the lavender bush, they’d be RAGING. British history is very complex and the intrinsic classism is something we must address. Whilst visiting these beautiful places of grandeur I’m finding there is increasingly more attention to the under classes who ran it. Kitchens are being restaged, exhibitions are more staff centric.

Also stately homes are such an important part of our architectural history. They’re beautiful buildings and without people going to visit they would be abandoned or sold off to more rich people and the public couldn’t access them at all.

@emuloc

It is not about "slagging off the history of the Uk", but about being honest about the history, and not hiding aspects of it, that people do not want to hear.

I know. The same people who complain about wiping off history that people do not like are the same who want people to wipe off/not talk about the history that makes them uncomfortable.

I like the houses as works of art in themselves

I love history but no, never particularly enjoy or engage with the history there as it is so toadying. I think it’s good that kitchens etc are so much more emphasised now, but that doesn’t especially interest me either. I always just end up imagining these slightly miserable lives..

I tend to agree with many of the sentiments of this post. I still mostly like visiting these places, but when one thinks about the history of the places, and what the owners did to obtain such wealth in the first place, I often feel a little awkward.

A relevant question might be to ask what the money would have been spent on if not the stately homes...my answer to that is usually nothing much better, racehorses and gambling, most probably? Although ideally it wouldn't have been allowed to accumulate like this in the first place of course.

tour guide kept mentioning how fortunate we were and how we were walking in the footsteps of important people in history....that really got my back up. We are all important people and our entrance fees are keeping these families in their stately homes!

Yes, this is what upholds the concept and structure of nobility and royalty - the notion that you're nothing and they're like gods. You're lucky to have them and be in their presence. People believe it after hearing it passed down from generation to generation.

@TheLovelinessOfDemons

I mostly visit them to re-enact battles.

You lot are wild. I once accidentally wandered into the Battle of Tewkesbury looking for DS and DH, who’d wandered off on a rest stop on the way home from Wales (and discovered them around a bonfire with some mildly inebriated Lancastrians).

To be honest, I find the assumption that giant estates are a thing of the past far more sinister than the sanitised NT ‘Here is a bed Eliz I slept in on one of her progresses’ version of history. I found Downton Abbey (written by tone-deaf professional posho Julian Fellowes) incredibly pernicious in exploiting the weirdly widespread tendency of a significant percentage of British people to forelock-tugging and normalise social inequality.

I gather there are moves afoot to include more of the slave trading history of NT properties in displays, and that this is causing much huffing and puffing among the types who just want to ooh and aah at the swag someone brought home from their Grand Tour and head for the tearoom.

If you read of the Sutherland's and the Highland clearances you will see how right you are!

As a child I enjoyed proper ruined castles, bonus if they had jousting or other re-enactments but found stately homes boring. Now I still enjoy a good ruin but quite like the grounds and gardens of NT etc, also the café if they have good scones. My ancestors were in domestic service so I have no illusions about that sort of life.

The more history of the UK you read you will see that those people were in a minority and from about 1200 we gave much more freedom and respect to our poorer classes than did other continental countries. There were freemen, not tied or owned by anyone.

The castles did not come from the same sort of people as 'stately homes'. There has been a steady development of 'rights' toward democracy. It did not take a revolution or Civil War as in France or United States. Our Civil War had comparatively few casualties.
France lost over an inch from the average height of the nation in revolution and Napoleonic times. US lost more in 1860s than inWW2

I think it's a two sided sword.

Yes, most stately home do have some story behind them with money coming from slavery connected income. Even if they didn't own planations themselves or were in shipping hugely, they were connected one way or the other.

But, these homes also give us artwork we admire and study. Without them, lots of artisans wouldn't have made it to the fame they have now. They also provided employment, badly paid, but for lots of areas, they were the only source for jobs. Big ones like Chatsworth still are a large employer.

We love going to stately homes and castles, be it in the UK or abroad. For me it is a matter of learning about a period in time better than just reading a book. Acknowledging how the wealth was accumulated is important but also is how the people living there shaped the region or even the country.

I wonder if the elites tried to hide the extent of their wealth from the plebs by looking rough and 'the look' gradually became the uniform that's been passed down from generation to generation.

Good point, placate the plebs!

British history is very complex and the intrinsic classism is something we must address. Whilst visiting these beautiful places of grandeur I’m finding there is increasingly more attention to the under classes who ran it. Kitchens are being restaged, exhibitions are more staff centric.

I think this is a good thing. Though I wonder if the re-focus is due to people having conversations like the OP, hence the attention is seen to be better placed on 'Look at what the 'lower class' had to go through - poverty-tourism' as opposed to 'Look and wonder at the magnificent wealth and opulence of those better than you. Something you'll never have'.

I'm sure there's an audience for both though.

I’ve been thinking precisely this over the last couple of years. I love history too but I’m so sick of the royals and those in power right now, that the whole system makes me feel queasy.

Usually I can disconnect sufficiently. However my sister and I were looking into family history and found the estate one person was working in as a boy was now open to visitors to stay in! We thought about it for about two seconds and then both went ,"Ugh no way!"

There a National trust place in Glasgow which was built from the profits of a plantation with slaves, but the fortune was lost in the American civil war. Its got a lovely garden. So if you want to feel schadenfreude over the loss of the house and families wealth AND enjoy the grounds have a visit.

@Trainbear sounds perfect 😂

@DGRossetti

England has only ever had one civil war.

I know you really meant "Britain"

England had two civil wars. Matilda v Stephen referred to as the years God and his angels slept, 18years of misery and desolation. Then we had King v Cromwell.
Scotland had Kings and Queens and nobles murdered for Religion. The kings of North Wales fought anybody who argued and at one time there were 3 kings in Ireland (I think that is correct).

My uncle lives in a village where a lot of the cottages still belong to the 'lord of the manor' (who lives in a beautiful stately home) and are rented to local families.

But the old aristocrat just died & the new Lord has seen other villages where cottages have become air bnb or been sold as second homes for a fortune.

So he's not repairing his tenants' cottages and keeps increasing rents in the hope that he can force them out. Its so cruel and means that locals have to leave the villages they've lived in for generations.

So yes I'm also looking at stately homes a little differently!

The big houses were the "lifeblood of the local economy" because the local economy was designed around providing for the owners of the big houses so that they could spend their time fighting and doing politics rather than having to mess around with cabbages. To ascribe some sort of benevolent motive to the situation is naive at best.

I enjoy visiting these places when you get a full history of what happened there and how everyone involved lived; the National Trust is usually very good at this. I don't feel comfortable in the ones that are privately owned as I feel like I'm handing over money to suppprt people who just happen to own a lot of land just the same as my ancestors did, and the history presented is usually embarrassingly incomplete. I'm not really interested in hearing about how the lower scullery maid was just so grateful to be allowed a whole half day a month off to visit her elderly impoverished mother and what a splendid employer the Earl of Whatever was for allowing it.

people who don't like them needn't visit?

@Wandawide, not really. Ireland before the Norman invasion wasn’t ruled as any form of unitary state, but as a collection of provincial kingdoms (between five and nine, at various stages) which were themselves subdivided into smaller kingdoms (tuatha) — the High Kingship was mostly titular, and pretty much never absolute.

I'm not really interested in hearing about how the lower scullery maid was just so grateful to be allowed a whole half day a month off to visit her elderly impoverished mother and what a splendid employer the Earl of Whatever was for allowing it.

Yep. Be grateful for any scrap from the overlords. Afterall, they're sent by god.

@Latara

My uncle lives in a village where a lot of the cottages still belong to the 'lord of the manor' (who lives in a beautiful stately home) and are rented to local families.

But the old aristocrat just died & the new Lord has seen other villages where cottages have become air bnb or been sold as second homes for a fortune.

So he's not repairing his tenants' cottages and keeps increasing rents in the hope that he can force them out. Its so cruel and means that locals have to leave the villages they've lived in for generations.

So yes I'm also looking at stately homes a little differently!

Prince Charles ?

@Latara that’s horrendous! How unethical.

@raspberrymuffin yes exactly, providing employment to your servants isn’t altruistic. Being kind to the general population who heavily outnumber you and if they were disgruntled and organised enough would realise they could just lop off your head is also not altruistic.

And for everyone who says the UK has managed to come through with gradual changes and avoid wars - fantastic! When is the end date to the now pointless aristocracy then?

Ironically, democracy has worked out for whomever was holding the titles back then - as they’ve not had to fight or strategise to keep their lands and title beyond not completely running out of money/not having a male heir - the peace forged by democracy has ingrained their position forever. At least the kings of old had to worry about long lost cousins and Spanish princes making power grabs.

Slightly detailing the point of my own thread but these are the thoughts that trouble me on the grounds of stately homes!

I'm a real history buff but I have virtually no interest at all in stately homes, mansions etc I'm much more interested in the lives and lifestyles of ordinary people in historic times than the aristocracy, give me the Jorvik Centre or Beamish over Chatsworth House any day.