The country house is a distinctly English institution. Whilst the French prize their monasteries, torn down on this side of the Channel by Henry VIII, we have preserved our great estates in literature as well as stone. Writing with an American perspective, Henry James observed that “of all the great things that the English have invented and made part of the credit of the national character, the most perfect, the most characteristic, the only one they have mastered completely in all its details, so that it becomes a compendious illustration of their social genius and their manners, is the well-appointed, well-administered, well-filled country house”. Felicia Hemans, writing in the early 19th century, also composed a panegyric to

The free, fair Homes of England!
Long, long, in hut and hall,
May hearts of native proof be rear’d
To guard each hallow’d wall!
And green for ever be the groves,
And bright the flowery sod,
Where first the child’s glad spirit loves
Its country and its God!

When we erect a stately home, we plant trees in whose shade we will never sit. Its literary endurance represents this. Rightful inheritance, and the preservation of the estate, dominates novels like Sense and Sensibility, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. At the conclusion to Pride and Prejudice, one might be inclined to ask which is more significant to Elizabeth Bennet: her love for Mr Darcy — or for Pemberley.

The future of the English stately home was not always guaranteed

The image of the country house is thus secure in the English national consciousness. Of course, before the Great Reform Act, Britain’s governing class was drawn directly from these homes. Even long after 1832, the English stately home offers a great physical reminder of continuity, inheritance and our duty to the generations that follow us. 

Despite this, the future of the English stately home was not always guaranteed. In fact, in 1943, when Evelyn Waugh sat down to pen Brideshead Revisited, our historical houses lay in great jeopardy. On 4 May 1912, Country Life advertised “the roofing balustrade and urns from the roof of Trentham Hall be purchased for £200”. This was part of a much broader trend. By 1955 one country house was being demolished every five days. The expense of maintaining vast homes and gardens far outstripped the wealth of England’s ailing aristocracy. 

The state of Brideshead Castle when Charles finds it in the novel represents the threat of military requisitioning. The commanding officer has “had the walls and fireplaces boarded up”; the soldiers have “done that fireplace through”; and someone has “made absolute hay” of the paintings Charles drew twenty years before. The destruction of the country house, and the decline of the English nobility who resided in it, permeates the whole novel. 

Charles’ aesthetically and culturally unfulfilling work as an artist is characterised by his role in this decline. He wistfully observes:

I was called to all parts of the country to make portraits of houses that were soon to be deserted or debased; indeed, my arrival seemed often to be only a few paces ahead of the auctioneer’s.

Yet just fourteen years after the novel’s publication, Waugh shrunk from this representation of decline. The preface to the 1959 reissue expressed embarrassment at what he now felt to be a “panegyric preached over an empty coffin”. He grew to regret his love letter to the old order, claiming that “it was impossible to foresee, in the spring of 1944, the present cult of the English country house”. Thus, Waugh acknowledged that “Brideshead today would be open to trippers, its treasurers rearranged by expert hangs and the fabric better maintained than it was by Lord Marchmain”. 

Brideshead isn’t a eulogy preached over an empty coffin; it’s a novel spoken on a deathbed. In 1944 the country house really did sit on the edge of obliteration. The resuscitation of the country house, in time for Waugh’s self-effacing essay in 1959, was a product of a literary revival which extolled the value that these homes offered to Britain. 

In the wake of the Second World War, England’s national identity felt out of reach. The days of empire were fading. British self-confidence had been shaken by American dominance: in The Remains of the Day, only Americans can afford English country houses. During the Second World War, Harold Macmillan summarised this sorry state of affairs, observing, “We, my dear Crossman, are Greeks in this American empire.”

Visitors to our country estates are accosted by slavery reports

It was in this moment of cultural insecurity that the “cult of the country house” was born. Before Brideshead, the stately home was a preserve of the aristocracy, its interior reserved for England’s elite. It was the job of writers to change this. In 1950, Deborah Mitford inherited both Chatsworth House and seven million pounds of death duties. Tens of thousands of acres of the estate’s lands had already been sold off to pay these debts, and further sales would be hindered by the post-war depression. Determined that Chatsworth would not go the way of so many houses before, Deborah realised that saving the property would require its democratisation. Thus, over the next five decades, she would open Chatsworth to the public. She went on to write several books about the estate, to restore and enhance the garden, and to open a farm shop and luxury food business. Chatsworth became a household name, and the house still stands in the Peak District today, as a testament to the 20th century as well as the 11th. 

In Brideshead Waugh set out with a similar task. Whilst today the purpose of the National Trust seems to be as an occasional stand-in for the John Lewis Café, it was set up in 1859, with the noble founding purpose of promoting “the permanent preservation for the benefit of the Nation of lands and tenements (including buildings) of beauty or historic interest”. This project, at its inception, was not focused on the acquisition of English stately homes. It was the work of writers like Waugh who demonstrated that England’s country piles were of “beauty” and “historic interest”. The National Trust Land Fund was created in 1946. It is a testament to the work that Waugh did to re-inspire interest in England’s ancestral seats, reviving a sense of national identity in touch with our history. Each stately home now stands testament to pride at the intergenerational work. 

Far from failing to predict “the cult of the English country house”, Waugh created it, ushering in — perhaps in spite of himself — a new age of democratisation for enjoyment far beyond the nobility. It was the work of novelists like Waugh which revived the country house and made it clear that these sites were of “historic interest”. The history of Brideshead has always been aligned with this process of democratisation. Castle Howard, the setting for the ITV adaptation of the novel, was one of the first houses opened up to the public after the war. Its current owner, Nick Howard, credits Waugh with preserving the site so synonymous with the novel. 

We should take pride in the English country house. It is a wonderful, distinctly English institution. It has always been the job of writers to preserve our cultural inheritance. I was heartened to see Castle Howard, the real-life Brideshead, included in Netflix’s Bridgerton. Daphne’s reaction upon seeing her new husband’s home wonderfully mirrored Charles’ when Sebastian first drives him there from Oxford. As the National Trust is losing visitors, it may seem that we are losing this pride, however. Visitors to our country estates are accosted by slavery reports, apologies for colonialism and criticisms of our history. It is not in these circumstances that English heritage will flourish.