ABSTRACT
The country house is the focal point and principal physical structure of a traditional landed estate and more than any other feature a visual symbol of the wealth and status of the landowner. Many sample estate heartlands were in all probability the site of early manors that existed even before the Domesday Survey of 1086, but by 1880 relatively few possessed a house that could be dated prior to 1500, not necessarily as a complete unit but preserving within its physical structure a portion, small or large, of such early origin. The prodigy-houses were built for ostentation and display, some occupied prominent and assertive sites and made no compromise with nature. The Renaissance was evident in most country-house building during the seventeenth century in the regard for symmetry and the use of classical decorations, but it was in the late seventeenth and eighteenth century that a mania for building in the classical style took hold on England.
