ABSTRACT
This chapter examines country-house losses in the sample group over the past hundred years; from a landscape perspective perhaps the greatest physical change to occur on a landed estate. The ultimate stage of clearance from the landscape has yet to be realised for some abandoned buildings which stand as roofless shells in varying stages of dilapidation and decay. All demolitions on sample estates prior to World War I were either accidental or deliberate acts in order to replace the existing house with one more suited to the tastes of the owner. War brought a temporary reprieve for a number of houses and no planned demolitions occurred on sample estates from 1940 to 1945. As early as 1877 William Morris founded the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB), the first public pressure group of its kind. The inter-war years witnessed the first onslaught in the demolition of Georgian houses.
