Introduction

Abstract

The opening essay introduces the history of demolished and otherwise lost country houses in Britain and Ireland in the twentieth century, exploring controversies caused by the campaigns to save abandoned great houses. Most contemporary discussions of country house loss arise from an assumption that saving these places is an intrinsic good, but such presentations can be misleading and one-sided. Demolished houses are not neutral subjects: their decline has aroused passions for those who lament the loss of beauty (where beauty rather than incongruity has indeed been lost) and for those who mistakenly lament a halcyon lost age of social order and beneficence. This introduction suggests that we need not mourn the loss of all lost country houses. Rather, we should attempt to set the realities and representations of country house destruction within broad historical perspectives. The essays that follow encompass a range of public, cultural and political actions and attitudes that open a window upon wider debates and suppositions.