Module: HIS7004-30 The Country House in Context

Level: 7

Credit Value: 30

Module Tutor: Jackie Collier

Module Tutor Contact Details: j.collier2@bathspa.ac.uk

1. Brief description and aims of module

The English country house, its landscaped gardens and its home farm, is a physical place, a symbol, a metaphor. It represents the comfortable complacency of a sunny afternoon out, and the more challenging narratives of power, loss and transformation.

It is at once both a triumph of architectural imagination, and testimony to inequalities of wealth and status, and access to them – literally and in the imagination. This module introduces a wide range of topics that form part of ‘country house studies’, as both a self-contained area of research and analysis and as a potential basis for further work. We will use a wide variety of sources, from maps and plans, account books and inventories, literature, paintings, objects and the houses themselves, to locate the house as a focus for social, cultural, political and economic history, and as a way of refracting distinct topics through a very specific lens.

You can use this module as a foundation for your final dissertation or public history project, in negotiation with the respective module co-ordinators. Try to see this part of your planning for the course as a whole, and the ways in which you can put together the content of each module to support and inform your final piece of work.

2. Outline syllabus

The syllabus is flexible, and will be adapted in relation to your specific needs and interests. It is likely to include some of the following:

• From moated manor to tea room: an overview of the history of the English country house
• International encounters: how can we use the historic house and landscape as a way of identifying and exploring international connections, from the transmission of architectural styles across national boundaries, and from the big house into popular culture, to the impact of empire and its demise?
• Social relations: while ‘upstairs, downstairs’ is now something of a cliché, understanding the relationships between different members of the household and between the house and the wider community offers a way of exploring its social role and significance, within changing external contexts
• Politics and power: the country house as political theatre
• Loss and transformation: the country house as public space; and the challenges of current use, management, conservation and interpretation
• The country house in art, literature and drama: filters and perspectives
• The problem and promise of the English country house in contemporary heritage management

3. Teaching and learning activities

This module is taught through a mix of seminars and visits to a range of houses across the region. Seminars allow us to introduce key themes and approaches, and as a forum for the discussion of specific case studies, the detailed development of particular houses, wider context, and how all this relates to your own research and proposals. Wherever possible, we use visits to houses across the region as the focus for these discussions, and you’ll be encouraged to visit independently as well, whenever you can. This will allow you to build up a body of knowledge about specific houses, and to think about how these individual histories relate to a wider narrative.

Assessment Item 1:

• Assessment Type: CW
• Description: Project proposal (1000 words)
• % Weighting: 20%

Assessment Item 2:

• Assessment Type: CW
• Description: Project portfolio (4000 words or equivalent)
• % Weighting: 80%