| | English country house - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
 | | Other country houses such as Ascott in Buckinghamshire were deliberately designed not to be stately, and to harmonise with the landscape, while some of the great houses such as Kedleston Hall and Holkham Hall were built as "power houses" to impress and dominate the landscape, and were certainly intended to be "stately homes". |
 | | The country house was not just a weekend retreat for aristocrats, but often a full time residence for the minor gentry who were a central node in the "squirearchy" that ruled Britain until the Reform Act of 1832 (as documented in The Purefoy Letters, 1735-53 by L G Mitchell). |
 | | The inhabitants of the English country house have become collectively referred to as the Ruling class, because this is exactly what they did in varying degrees, whether by holding high political influence and power in national government or in the day-to-day running of their own localities in such offices as magistrates, or occasionally even clergy. |
| en.wikipedia.org /wiki/English_country_house (1875 words) |