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Updated: June 11, 2025
There are all kinds and conditions of them, great and small, grand and simple, and each is a joy to the proud possessor. Life was such a turbulent affair in the Middle Ages that country life in the modern sense was an impossibility. The chateaux and castles and large manor-houses were strongly fortified, and there were inner courts for exercise.
We turn to England for the most perfect examples of country houses, for the theory of country living is so thoroughly understood there, one might really say it is a national institution. Many of the manor-houses, both great and small, are beautiful examples of Tudor architecture, which seems especially suited to their setting of lovely green parks.
'I don't care for your shillings, he said to Shaxper, 'nor for the printed plays afterward; but I do value your front and your footing and the services they can render me on my way to self- expression. He was an earl, or something such, with a country-seat in Warwick, or on the borders of Gloucestershire; 'and if I only had a year and the money to make a journey among the manor-houses of mid-England, I said, 'and to dig for a while in their muniment-rooms.... Well, you get the idea, all right enough.
In the forenoon we went off to explore the environs; we visited two ancient manor-houses, those of Elie and Balcaskie. Large roomy mansions, with good apartments, two or three good portraits, and a collection of most extraordinary frights, prodigiously like the mistresses of King George I., who "came for all the goods and chattels" of old England.
There was need of strong walls, as the French often at that period ravaged the coast of Sussex, burning towns and manor-houses. Clark, the great authority on castles, says that "Bodiam is a complete and typical castle of the end of the fourteenth century, laid out entirely on a new site, and constructed after one design and at one period.
They were old manor-houses, mostly of the Georgian period, some earlier, and some, too, were fine large farmhouses which a century or more ago had been turned into private residences of city merchants and other persons of means.
Those who are born noble may slumber out their lives within the walls of their castles and manor-houses; but he who hath achieved nobility by his own deeds must ever be in the saddle, to show that he merits his advancement." While he spoke thus, the Lady gazed fondly on him, as if endeavouring to read his inmost soul; for the tone in which he spoke was that of melancholy depression.
Had he grasped and retained that kind, firm little hand in his, an entirely new life had been within his reach. A vision rose before Paul de Virieu a vision of Sylvia and himself living heart to heart in one of those small, stately manor-houses which are scattered throughout Brittany. And it was no vague house of dreams. He knew the little château very well.
Really large houses of the size of the manor-houses and halls which are scattered over England in tens of thousands, can be counted in Australia in scores. Of these but few have any architectural pretensions. Houses of this class cannot be built under £10,000 here, whereas in England they would cost from £4,000 to £5,000 and can be bought still cheaper.
Nightingales sang in Holland Lane; blackbirds and thrushes haunted the nurseries and orchards. Great vegetable-gardens met the fields. Here and there stood an old country house in its own grounds. Green lanes led but to more rural villages, farms and manor-houses. Notting Barns was a farmhouse on the site of Notting Hill.
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