Technology in the Country House (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781848022805)

By the 19th century, life in most country houses changed as a result of various technical inventions such as improved water supplies, flushing water closets, boilers and pipes to provide central heating, internal communications by bells and then telephones, and better lighting by means of gas and electricity. Country houses, however, were usually too far from urban centres to take advantage of centralised sources of supply and so were obliged to set up their own systems if they wanted any of these services to improve the comfort of daily living. Some landowners chose to do this; others did not, and this book examines the motivations for their decisions. Many books have been devoted to the life of those in domestic service in such houses, but this book looks not so much at the social records of their lives as the actual physical evidence for the greater levels of comfort and convenience sought by landowners in country houses from the 18th to the early 20th centuries.


Author: Marilyn Palmer, Ian West
ISBN-10: 1848022808
ISBN-13: 9781848022805
Publisher: Historic England Publishing
Language: English
Published: 10/31/2016
Pages: 272
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 2.40lbs
Size: 10.90h x 8.60w x 0.70d

About the Author

Marilyn Palmer is an Emeritus Professor of Archaeology and President of the Association for Industrial Archaeology.

Ian West is a historical archaeologist and chartered engineer.