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Gibside: The curious roofless castle where The King's ancestor was kidnappedGibside flourished under coal baron George Bowes but his heiress daughter, Mary Eleanor, nearly lost it all to her deceitful second husband.
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'A blue-blood background and a drive to disrupt': Lady Violet Manners on the importance of preserving Britain's privately-owned country homesThe Viscountess talks about a childhood at Belvoir Castle, primogeniture and why Americans love a British country home.
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A Suffolk home where glass, steel, timber and thatch come together in perfect harmonyThis new house of four discrete elements adopts vernacular forms and materials to striking effect. Clive Aslet pays a visit to Housestead, Suffolk — home of Abigail Hopkins and Amir Sanei — to discover more. Photography by Paul Highnam for Country Life.
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Why has everyone fallen under the spell of Wrotham Park — one of the largest private houses inside the M25Wrotham Park, the seat of the Earls of Strafford, is not open to the public and hardly any interior photographs are available to view online. So why do film directors, photographers and luxury brands continue to flock to it?
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Refurbishing the Palace of Westminster will be extremely expensive, but so too will be doing nothingWe must confront the neglect of Parliament.
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What binds the Queen Mother and Chicago's first department store? A lost castle that was blown to smithereens by the Territorial ArmyStreatlam Castle was one of the Earls of Strathmore and Kinghorne three principal seats.
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The only thing better than a stately home is a stately home in wooden miniatureMeet George Barham — the gifted woodcarver who can turn your family pile into a wooden masterpiece.
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'I have never ceased talking of the beauty of Ampthill': The tale of one of Britain's best-loved country housesJeremy Musson describes the complex evolution of Ampthill Park House, Bedfordshire — home of Sir Timothy and Lady Clifford — at the hands of Sir Christopher Wren’s master mason Robert Grumbold, mason-surveyor John Lumley and Sir William Chambers.
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'A fantastic creation, with the magic of a strange, dreamed, longed-for world': Inside Schloss Charlottenhof, the Prussian royal family's exquisite sanctuaryThe desire for a retreat from the cares of the Prussian court and the formality of palace protocol created Schloss Charlottenhof, Brandenburg, a neo-Classical masterpiece. Aoife Caitríona Lau explains more; photographs by Paul Highnam for Country Life.
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The magnificent London mansion that Country Life mourned when it was demolished to make room for the Dorchester HotelDorchester House was once the epicentre of late-Victorian society.
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Repton: The 500-year-old school with a medieval priory whose story leads back to the kings of MerciaThe medieval Augustinian priory within the curtilage of Repton School in Derbyshire links together the history of this great public school with the Anglo-Saxon era and the Kings of Mercia. David Robinson tells its story, with photographs by Paul Highnam for Country Life.
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The striking Arts & Crafts country home with interiors by William Morris that disappeared without a traceRounton Grange was built using profits from the Industrial Revolution, but couldn't quite survive the economic difficulties unleashed by the Second World War
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'The Shakespeare of architects... he has yet had no equal in this country': Sir John Vanbrugh and the legacy of Blenheim PalaceTo mark the tercentenary of Sir John Vanbrugh’s death, Charles Saumarez Smith considers the changing reactions to one of his greatest creations, Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire. Photographs by Will Pryce for Country Life.
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Can you tell the difference between a trefoil and an embrasure? A pictorial guide to medieval architectureMedieval architecture is easy to admire, but its terminology can be impenetrable. Matthew Rice's illustration unlocks it.
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Lord Byron, Charles Dickens and Sir Walter Scott once dined at this Jacobean mansion in London. Destroyed by The Blitz it lives on now only in the Country Life ArchiveLord Byron jockeyed for position at the table alongside Lord Melbourne and Benjamin Disraeli. Charles Dickens and Sir Walter ScottThe Holland House estate was once London's best example of early domestic Jacobean architecture in the country.
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'Climbing is to ascend not only through space, but through centuries of lineage': The great staircases of Britain's finest country housesThe grand, sweeping staircases of old country houses are loaded with centuries of architectural, romantic and ghostly allure. Melanie Cable-Alexander takes a look at how they've become entwined with our ideas of what a country house should be.
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The Picturesque Scottish castle built on land admired by Robert Burns and erased by warDunglass Castle, in Scotland, was once a vision of 18th century Picturesque beauty. Now it lives on only in the Country Life Archive.
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The great country houses which inspired the tales of Agatha Christie, 50 years on from her deathBritain's greatest-ever crime writer set many of her murder mysteries in country houses. With the help of specially commissioned drawings by Matthew Rice, Jeremy Musson looks at the architecture of the buildings she knew — and those which she imagined.
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Find out what remains of the colossal country house whose 'corpulent buffoon' of an owner had it blown up with vast quantities of gunpowderMelanie Bryan revisits Eastbury Park in Dorset — which was photographed for Country Life 99 years ago, decades after large parts of it were demolished.
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The light, heavenly mills that 'rival the splendour of the great palaces of Venice', built beside a canal in West YorkshireOver the past 40 years, a remarkable experiment has brought about the revival of an imposing and vast Victorian factory building. John Martin Robinson visits Salts Mill in Saltaire, West Yorkshire — the property of the Silver family — to find out more. Photography by Paul Highnam for Country Life.
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The 400-year-old floors perfectly preserved in the house that inspired Charles Dickens to create Miss Havisham's mansionMost country houses demand you look up and around at what you see. At Restoration House in Rochester, you'll miss out if you don't also look down.
