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?

They are pretty awful looking in a lot of cases.

I hear what you’re saying OP but it’s an odd thing to fixate on. You might as well walk through London stressing about the quality of life suffered by most of the Victorian labourers who built it in toxic smog with no pensions or health pay, while feeling guilty about the abducted Uyghurs who made your clothes in some Chinese forced-labour camp, and staring at your feet as they walk along in shoes made from the leather of a bull-calf shot at birth because males can’t be used for milk…

Don’t mean to be quite so depressing but misery inequality and exploitation are everywhere and stately homes at least have transformed into public-access beauty spots. Enjoy them and if you want to think about ethics get involved in campaigning or donating for some of the charities fighting horrible things going on today.

I think a lot of people feel that way and the National Trust (for example) is working really hard to showcase the stories of other people who lived and worked in those places (servants, enslaved people etc) as well as be frank about the dodgy ways stately homes were paid for and the uncomfortable truths about what their owners contributed to history.

This is often derided as 'wokeness' in a bad way. I think it's fine to be 'woke' in its true sense, as in aware of how the status quo privileges one set of people to the tragic detriment of others. I have worked in museums and stately homes and I love them, but this is a genuine part of their history and we need to acknowledge it.

My grandmother was 'in service' in a big house. I am always most interested in the below stairs areas. One family may have lived in the best part of the house but these places supported whole communities. I'm not defending that but it's the way it was and sometimes still is e.g. Chatsworth.

@Thirtytimesround

I hear what you’re saying OP but it’s an odd thing to fixate on. You might as well walk through London stressing about the quality of life suffered by most of the Victorian labourers who built it in toxic smog with no pensions or health pay, while feeling guilty about the abducted Uyghurs who made your clothes in some Chinese forced-labour camp, and staring at your feet as they walk along in shoes made from the leather of a bull-calf shot at birth because males can’t be used for milk…

Don’t mean to be quite so depressing but misery inequality and exploitation are everywhere and stately homes at least have transformed into public-access beauty spots. Enjoy them and if you want to think about ethics get involved in campaigning or donating for some of the charities fighting horrible things going on today.

I think that the difference is that no one is presenting walking down a London street to work or wearing Chinese sweatshop clothes as some kind of artificially benign 'heritage leisure' experience.

(And with the advent of more use of sexed semen, mass culling of excess bull calves in dairy herds is slowing right down, because they're no longer being born in such numbers...)

@monfuseds

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!

Nope, I don't think so. Our local gentry dress as they do because they drive tractors, run livery yards and litter-pick their own hedges.

The last time I saw someone who I know is descended from Henry VII, he was wearing filthy jeans and a reflective jacket - almost 70 and still out there farming every day.

@Thirtytimesround I do support causes that campaign for change on a range of issues - as a rounded human being I can consider a multitude of topics without being fixated on any particular one!

We can’t change the past, but we should remember it and learn from it.
IMO feeling sad about past inequality and injustice is fine, as long as that feeling shapes how you live your life going forward.
My feeling is that nowadays, it is largely celebrity and huge wealth, that creates issues similar to those that the “underdogs” of society experienced up to the 1930’s and beyond, in some cases. Revelations about Hollywood stars and Uber-rich Dubai residents paying minimum, or less-than-minimum wages to their staff right now, are the issues we should be concentrating on, rather than directing our ire against people long-dead!

@Farrandau I think you’ve hit the nail on the head there!

@Farrandau you're spot on. When we consume this fictional benign version of the past we risk creating a sort of nostalgia for a simpler, better time that never actually existed, which is how we've ended up in this current bizarre political situation where we're all surprised that members of a group that consider themselves the ruling class act like it.

My grandma left school at 14 and went into service. She loved learning and art and music but instead of doing any of that she had to work long days scrubbing floors etc in a boys' private boarding school and didn't get to live for herself, as she described it, until she was middle aged. They weren't doing her a favour by giving her a job, they were profiting from a situation in which she, a child, had effectively no choice. We can't fall back into thinking that way of living is normal.

The thing is, what good does it do to feel bitter and annoyed? If you're at a National Trust property (as opposed to one still family-owned) it's not like the aristocracy suffers from you grumping about or history changes, you're just ruining the visit for yourself.

@pinkpillower

Has it been dismantled though...

Has it fuck. Sir Bufton Fucking Tufton and his corrupt mates are still in charge.

@PattyPan that’s true! I guess the bitterness gives me the energy to be interested in topics of inequality today and reminds me not to buy too many groceries from Daylesford 🤣

Castles often seem to have very different histories and are often good for dragging more obscure areas of English history to light.

My childhood covered more working class museums as well as castles - argicultural/industial museums. School visits to a stately home we reacted English civil war with pikes and lot of talk of priest hole house was famous for.

We have not really done stately homes with our kids - not driving does mean they are hard to get to. When we have been to castles, we’ve often been lucky enough to see re-enactors and they often talk of washing, cooking weapons, clothes – more everyday experiences

I grew up watching BBC Victorian Kitchen garden and later Victorian Kitchen – you tube these days has Mrs Crocombe’s Victorian cookery – more the things some of my ancestors were up to and I think these days there’s more emphasis on all classes than there once was.

Surprising thing to me BBC history program have taught me is that slave compensation went into British Museum but also funded railways – my ancestors worked the railways and they still get us around today. There is a statue in Manchester that commemorates the hardship of mill workers of the refusing to take southern states cotton in US civil war – the mill workers also suffered when India started to refuse to buy the cloth that before us they used to make themselves and get profit with – wealth creation via slavery and colonialism benefits are surprisingly more widespread than just the big houses.

The few stautely houses we have been round - we're already aware of where money came from - so haven't been hyper focused on that.

If plebs like us don't go to these places, they'll be sold off to Russian oligarchs. I like the ones where you can see the behind the scenes bits too. I always look houses up to get the warts and all history, it can be quite eye opening compared to the official presentation!

I mainly like the gardens, flowers are nice anywhere right?

@DGRossetti

It's pretty much a given that the estates that went up - or were expanded - from about 1650 to the 1830s were paid for from and with the profits of slave trading and slave labour in the colonies.

And when slavery was abolished the slave owners were compensated (we stopped paying them in 2016 by the way) and some of that money will have gone into their stately piles of bricks.

It does change your view of things as you walk around.

2016!!!!! How was this compensated?! Omg I am shocked

I agree with you OP. If it was properly in the past, maybe I could appreciate them more. But until the patriarchy, racism and capitalist bastards all fuck off, I do struggle.

eu.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/30/fact-check-u-k-paid-off-debts-slave-owning-families-2015/3283908001/

taxjustice.net/2020/06/09/slavery-compensation-uk-questions/

No I don't feel that way at all. I often go and wonder around castles or stately homes and enjoy doing so. They usually have lovely gardens too. Often a nice cafe with good coffee and cake.

All the big Norman castles (especially in Wales) are also huge demonstrations of oppression. Not the nice fluffy oppression we have these days. But the OG style where the North of England was almost wiped out.

[quote Calennig]eu.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/30/fact-check-u-k-paid-off-debts-slave-owning-families-2015/3283908001/

taxjustice.net/2020/06/09/slavery-compensation-uk-questions/[/quote]
Oh, yes, forgot to mention - as taxpayers you and I were compensating the descendants of the poor slave owning families who lost their property.

It is good that the National Trust is looking to address the history of colonialism and slavery with regards to their stately homes.

I'm not, but I guess OP is entitled to feel that way. Certainly there's a degree of unease underlying seats of privilege, but I guess that's the case with everything in history with so much stuff happening that was awful and unacceptable now.

I'd say it's better not to let that overwhelm you otherwise it's kind of fitting this narrative that people 'can't cope' with negative stories from history and that discomfort is enough reason to shut things away, whereas talking about it and making it visible is exactly what we have to do.

I bloody love a good castle because I'm a bloodthirsty bastard, but I find stately homes are often lacking in decent, nuanced history in favour of the Upstairs Downstairs vibe.

Mostly I'm just more interested in longbows and military tactics than posh furniture

My parents are obsessed with visiting stately homes and dragged us along with them as kids and I was bored witless then and wouldn't choose to go and visit one now as an adult.

My DM has done lots of research on our family history and has found that lots of her ancestors were tenant farmers who were turfed off the land and into poverty by Sir Bufton Fucking Tufton. That's put a bit of a different spin on things for her.