Country Life's 10 best architecture stories of 2022
A 'heaven on earth in the Cotswolds' and the library of your dreams are among the best this year.
Hall Place, Hampshire: The fabulous house where the Duchess of Cornwall spent her idyllic childhood summers
Hall Place in West Meon, Hampshire, is currently the home of Michael and Claudia Langdon. Yet for many years it was owned by the grandparents of HRH The Duchess of Cornwall, and was specially chosen by her for coverage in her guest-edited issue of Country Life.
Inside Kelmscott Manor, William Morris’s ‘heaven on earth’ in the Cotswolds
Jeremy Musson visited a house that was beloved of William Morris, the poet, designer and founding father of the conservation movement.
The best country house architects in Britain
Back in March we published our updated list of the finest architects in Britain — the people you need to go to for serious work on a country house.
Mapperton House: Still the nation’s finest manor house?
In June, Timothy Connor explained more about the home of the Viscount and Viscountess Hinchingbrooke, the Dorset home that is one of our most celebrated manor houses.
Exquisite houses, the beauty of Nature, and how to get the most from your life, straight to your inbox.
The Royal Yacht Britannia: How The Queen created a floating home and theatre of state
We don't have a yachts editor — perhaps next year — but architecture editor John Goodall was more than happy to go aboard HMY Britannia to tell its unique story.
Longstowe Hall: The superb country house that makes you feel like you’ve ‘stepped into a 17th-century Dutch painting’
Incredible stuff in the form of an Elizabethan house that was remodelled by an Edwardian industrialist who created superb interiors in the aesthetic of the Dutch Masters.
Beeleigh Abbey: An incredible medieval house that’s barely altered since Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the monasteries
Just last month we looked at the house — including the sumptuous library — of a building whose survival is an extraodrinary quirk of history when so many similar places were razed to the ground.
Fulbeck House: A wonderful home ‘that arrests the eye as an ideal of English country living’
Nowhere lost more great country houses that Lincolnshire during the 20th century — but this one remains, and is in splendid shape.
London’s lost masterpieces: The palaces and Georgian gems torn down in 30 years of 20th century madness
London would look very different had it not been for the widespread demolition of Georgian architecture in the 20th century. John Martin Robinson took a look back at what was lost and what was fortunately saved.
Balmoral: A Highland paradise, and the much-loved royal family summer escape since 1848
After Her Majesty passed away at Balmoral in September 2022, we revisited Mary Miers' fascinating piece from a decade previously about this true home-from-home for the royal family.
Blenheim Palace: The story of the English answer to Versailles
Quite simply one of the outstanding palaces of Baroque Europe, planned as both a residence and national monument, was the subject of John Goodall's piece in the summer.
See Country Life's top 10s of 2022
Toby Keel is Country Life's Digital Director, and has been running the website and social media channels since 2016. A former sports journalist, he writes about property, cars, lifestyle, travel, nature.
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'Love, desire, faith, passion, intimacy, God, spiritual consciousness, curiosity and adventure': The world of Stanley Spencer, a very English visionaryStanley Spencer’s talent for seeing the spiritual in the everyday, his stirring sense for the wonder of Nature and his love for the landscapes of Berkshire and Suffolk shaped his art, as Matthew Dennison reveals.
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Waldorf Astoria New York review: The Midtown hotel where Frank Sinatra once partied and the salad of the same name was invented emerges from a decade-long renovationOwen Holmes checks into the Waldorf Astoria New York hotel.
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Only a handful of Britain's great houses were photographed by Country Life in a ruinous state. This once splendid Gothic castle is one of themThis is the tragic tale of Tong Castle, a once great Georgian-Gothic castle that was eventually consumed by Nature.
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The Rococo jewel nestled into vineyard terraces that's a visual index of 'a king’s Enlightenment belief in knowledge, cultivation and the civilising power of Nature'A summer picnic in 1743 prompted Frederick the Great to create a retreat for himself outside his capital at Berlin. The result was the creation of Schloss Sanssouci in Brandenburg, as Aoife Caitríona Lau explains.
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Best in class: This year's Georgian Group Architectural Award winners revealedThe Georgian Group’s Architectural Awards, sponsored by Savills, attracted another outstanding crop of entries this year. We reveal the winners, as chosen by a panel of judges chaired by Country Life's Architectural Editor, John Goodall.
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The rise, fall, rise and eventual demolition of a Welsh wonder with an intriguing link to the Duke of WestminsterMelanie Bryan delves into the Country Life archives and the history of one of Wales’s most extraordinary manor houses.
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Exclusive: The House of Commons as you've never seen it before, 75 years on from reopening following its destruction during the BlitzThis year marks the 75th anniversary of the reopening of the House of Commons following the destruction of its predecessor in 1941 during the Blitz. John Goodall reports; photographs by Will Pryce.
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'A bluff, honest man in the trappings of greatness': The extraordinary story of the Foundling Hospital, and the sailor who saved the abandoned children of LondonA remarkable charitable endeavour to save abandoned children on the streets of London has a touching legacy in the form of the The Foundling Museum in the very centre of London. John Goodall tells its story; photographs by Will Pryce.
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Where is 'The Traitors' filmed? Inside the Scottish castle sold via the pages of Country Life three times for an unbelievable amountMelanie Bryans delves into the Country Life archives and uncloaks the history of the turreted Highland castle made famous by the global TV franchise, 'The Traitors'.
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Stefan Pitman: Making great country houses cost less to heat than a suburban semiThe trailblazing architect Stefan Pitman — founder of SPASE — joins the Country Life Podcast.
