Lost Country House Postcards

Photo owned and reproduced with kind permission from Country House Postcards Facebook Page

Postcards may be a dying art these days with the rise of social media, email and television, and especially the internet which allows us to research and see pictures of any place on the planet. However, some people do still enjoy picking up a postcard with beautiful images of the places they visit, writing a small greeting on the back, and sending it to friends or family.

In previous decades however, before cameras were as widely available and before televisions were in everyone’s homes, the only way for friends and family to be able to see where you had been on holiday would be for you to send them a postcard or to bring postcards back with you from your holiday. This did not just mean holidays abroad, this also applied to visits across the UK.

One of the trends of the early 20th century included purchasing and collecting country house post cards. These were photographs of the thousands of country houses across the UK. These post cards may have become lost in the annals of time were it not for the fact that in the first half of the twentieth century, the country house went into decline.

Houses were taken over for the war, sons did not return from war, the fashion for country house ‘parties’ were not as popular any more, servants began to think of other careers, and the economy changed to the point that country houses being run in the way they were during the Victorian and Edwardian periods, was no longer feasible.

In the 1920’s, 30’s, 40’s and 50’s, hundreds of country houses were abandoned by families who simply couldn’t afford the upkeep any more. Many of them suffered as a result of being commissioned and misused by the war office during the first and second world wars, and others were simply left closed and empty for decades. Decay as a result of poor maintenance occurred quickly and were eventually demolished when they had become a hazard or when the owner decided to sell the land. This is before buildings could be listed and protected.

Now, in the twenty first century there is an increasing popularity for country house postcards which can be bought at craft and antique fairs which document many of the UK’s lost country houses. These postcards may be some of the last images we have of some of the finest architectural buildings of the 19th and 20th century.

These Longleat postcards are currently on sale on eBay:

Although as we know Longleat is not 'lost,' it gives you a good taste of what the postcards were like. 

Let's instead have a look at some houses that we know are now 'lost' . . . 

Anyone who lives in West Yorkshire knows about Saltaire and Salts Mill. The below house, Milner Fields was built for Titus Salt Jr. but the house was said to have terrible bad luck and was never a successful country house pile. It was completed around 1873 and demolished in the 1950's.

Both images from Pinterest

Eaton Hall in Chester was probably one of my favourite lost country houses due to the scale and the gothic grandeur . . . it's like something from a horror movie. How I would love to be able to travel in time and explore this house! The Eaton estate was home to the Grosvenor family from around the mis 1440's and their fortune was vast. This house was completed in 1881 and cost £32.5m in todays money to build. Unfortunately, post WW2 the family's fortune could not sustain such a sizeable house and it was demolished and replaced with a newer, smaller (although not small in our terms) house. Eaton Hall is still very much the home of the Duke of Westminster and some of the outbuildings of this great Victorian home did survive demolition. Definitely worth a visit if you're in the area!

These images are featured on and belong to www.lostheritage.org.uk which is one of my favourite websites on the internet! Please do go and check it out as it has many more photographs of lost country houses. . . you could get lost yourself looking at them all!

I hope you enjoyed this quick post . . . see you again soon! x

A History of Diary Writing

Photo Source

A diary or journal has been used for hundreds of years as a way for an individual to record the events within their daily lives, leaving a unique look at one person’s perception of the world which can be looked back upon in future years. Some diarists subsequently publish their diaries, or have them published by members of their family.

Perhaps the most famous diary in the world is that of Anne Frank, the German-born Jewish girl who hid from the Nazi’s in an attic with her family. At just fifteen when she died, her diary captured the hearts of everyone who read it for its frank and innocent view of such horrific times.

Source: Smithsonian Magazine

I myself kept a diary for a number of years during the first years of high school, recording the minutiae of daily life, as well as all my teenage crushes (there were a lot!). I recently read back over the diaries and was both embarrassed at their content and also impressed that I managed to commit to writing entries almost every day. In subsequent years, I have tried to take up journal writing again but I continually fail.

It made me think . . . was this due to a specific reason? Are our lives now too full of technology and other stimulants to make diary writing feasible? I have decided to take a look back through the centuries at when diaries became popular and how diaries were used to see if there are any reasons why they were more or less popular over different centuries. . .


The Diary’s Origin

The word ‘diary’ comes from the Latin word diarum which meant daily allowance and the earliest examples seem to come from the Middle and East Asian cultures. “The earliest surviving diary of this era which most resembles the modern day was that of Ibn Banna’ in the 11th century. His diary is the earliest known to be arranged in order of date (ta’rikh in Arabic), very much like modern diaries.” [George Makdisi, "The Diary in Islamic Historiography: Some Notes". History and Theory. 1986. pp. 173–85.]

The Rise of the Diary

Diarising was really established in England during the seventeenth century. This timing coincides with the reformation when the bible was translated into English for the first time, which meant that more men and women were learning to read and write so that they could have a more personal relationship with the bible and with God. Alongside this, with the invention of the printing press, paper became more widely produced and available for people to purchase. What with an increase in literacy and access to writing materials, diary writing began to increase in popularity.

One of the most famous diarists of the period Samuel Pepys ‘seems to have begun his diary because he was aware of the crisis affecting the nation at the start of 1660’ [source]. It seems that living within a society where there are significant political events happening is likely to encourage people to keep a journal. 

An excerpt from Pepys's diary concerning Charles II's investigations into the affairs of the Navy Office [source]

Diaries really seem to have hit the height of popularity between the 18th and 20th centuries and authors such as Jane Austen show their characters writing in their diary about their lives. This could be again due to the fact that the physical diary was more readily available in shops and were more affordable. Secondly, this is a period in history which brought great change to England. There was the industrial revolution, the building of the railways, the expansion of the British Empire, steam power and much, much more! Perhaps we can surmise that, like Samuel Pepys in the 17th century, diarists living in the later centuries were compelled to write in a way to record the changing world around them.

Men and Women, how they differ

Whilst men seem to have been keen to keep a diary in order to record major events in their lives, both personally as well as major social events, women’s diaries were much more about their personal lives and the lives of people around them. They were filled with observations about different people and so were more emotionally written, where men were more likely to record in a non-emotive, almost catalogue style.

Many historians have relied upon these diaries in order to find out more about the intimate personalities of those who have lived before us, as without those diaries, historians would have to reply upon newspaper articles and letters. Both of these can be limiting in that newspapers can be biased and articles about specific people are usually only written when something significant has happened to them such as a birth, death, marriage or scandal, and letters, due to their very nature tend not to be very confessional. It is quite rare for someone to spill their deepest secrets to a family member or friend, but they are much more willing to do so in a diary which no one may read. In this respect then, the diary is the closest historians can come to knowing a historical person without having been with them when they were alive.


So when I had looked into this and thought about it a bit more, I realised that there were several reasons why diary writing may be dying out; we are a much more conversation based society now, we know a lot more about the lives of those around us from television and mass media, and also the invention of social media allows us to record our daily lives in an almost technology based diary.

Perhaps all social media users are writing a diary, it’s just the medium that has changed. I guess we will have to wait for historians in the future to decide!

Lancelot 'Capability' Brown - Who Was He?

Lancelot 'Capability' Brown by Nathaniel Dance, (died 1811) - National Portrait Gallery: NPG 1490

During the 18th century if you owned a country house and wanted society people to visit and admire your stately seat, then you needed to ensure that the architectural style of the house and gardens were contemporary and 'in vogue'. Throughout the period there was one single name which was on the lips of the gentry when it came to updating their estate and gardens, Lancelot 'Capability' Brown.

Brown was born in 1716 in a village in Northumbria called Kirkhale, to William (a land agent) and Ursula Brown. He was the fifth child and so whilst he was not born into poverty, he certainly was not born to privilege or into the gentry. He was educated at Cambo School until the age of 16 when he left to become a gardener's apprentice at the same estate that his father worked at. He worked there until the age of 23 where his interest and passion for gardening was fostered by the estate owner Sir William Loraine.

Following this role, Brown moved to Stowe which was his breakthrough position. As under gardener to William Kent he was privy to great opportunity as well as expertise. He arrived at Stowe in 1741 and within ten years he had moved to London with his family to set up his own landscape design company.

"Brown's career as a landscape architect spanned over 50 years and he was responsible for transforming huge expanses of the British Isles and beyond into the natural Arcadian parkland that is so synonymous with English scenery. In reality he didn't so much design a landscape as allow nature to dictate its own surroundings." (Capability Brown & Belvoir: Discovering a Lost Landscape from The Duchess of Rutland and Jane Pruden).

Whilst the gentry loved Brown and were keen to employ him on their lands, the local village people must have quaked in their books when they learned he was to be employed at their local gentry's estate as Brown was known for wiping out villages if they got in the way of his vision or were too close to the country house in question.

Audley End, Nuneham and Bowood were just a few of the villages which were demolished either as a way to increase the separation between the poor of the villages and the rich of the 'big house', or because they sat in direct view of the house and therefore spoiled the rural view he was trying to create.

Badminton House - an example of Brown's work

The idea of Brown's landscape was to give inhabitants an visitors of the house an unbroken view across a landscape of rolling hills, fields, trees and lakes. If a village or church got in the way, it ran the risk of either being totally demolished and its inhabitants forced to move elsewhere, or, it could be moved and relocated elsewhere.

Brown was also criticised for the fact that when his landscapes were introduced at a country estate, they often wiped out any formal gardens, meaning many historical garden features were lost.

Whatever side you come down upon, either a staunch anti-Brown or Brown lover, one thing can be certain - Lancelot 'Capability' Brown designed some of the most famous landscapes in the country including Chatsworth, Blenheim Palace, Althorp Hall, Longleat, Hampton Court Palace, Harewood House, Kew Gardens, Warwick Castle and Stowe Landscape Garden among hundreds more.