Great Houses

The parish of Ballyduff in North Kerry and the parish of Tracton in South Cork share many similarities. Both consist of small villages surrounded by a large rural hinterland, the village being Minane Bridge in the case of Tracton parish. Both contain the remains of medieval abbeys, Rattoo Abbey with its round tower in Ballyduff, and the scant remains of Tracton Abbey in Cork . Both are feared by opponents on the hurling field. However, the two parishes share one further commonality. Throughout the 19th Century, both contained vast estates that were the property of the same family – the Stoughtons. In the case of Tracton Parish, the Stoughton family obtained the Gortigrenane Estate through marriage with the Daunt family. This advantageous marriage also brought them large estates in England – including Owlpen Manor in Gloucestershire, where the Daunts originally came from . The Stoughton home estate, prior to this marriage, had been at Ballyhorgan House, Ballyduff. The purpose of this article is to compare their management of their English and Cork estates, with that of the Ballyhorgan estate, and to examine relationships between the family and the people of Ballyduff.

Medieval and early modern great houses had a three-fold identity as house, garden and farm. The manorial curia was made up of enclosures, buildings and rooms with residential, service, agricultural and horticultural functions. The enclosures can be defined by the nature of their perimeter, and by their situation in relation to the hall, which was central to the complex, and the line of approach to it. The layout of houses developed as fashionable new ones were built and older ones were modernised. The number of indoor and outdoor spaces with a specific function increased; houses become more outward-looking, symmetrical and compact, and extensive gardens were laid out. Subsequently the enclosures and low-status buildings surrounding great houses were swept away, leaving the domestic part standing alone, but often leaving little or no trace of their former existence.

The Chaco Phenomenon remains a contentious and ever evolving paradigm of Southwest Archaeology. Key to understanding the nature of Chaco, is the extent and purpose of the many outlying great house communities scattered across the northern Southwest. One of the farthest flung of these possible outliers is the Mac-Stod great house of the Petrified Forest National Park expansion lands. This structure is diminutive in scale compared with canyon great houses, but retains multiple features associated with Chacoan architecture. Its relationship to the greater Chaco world is unclear, but such structures did not exist in isolation and must be regarded as part of a larger cultural landscape. One often-overlooked aspect of Chacoan landscapes is the presence of rock art. Surveys around Mac-Stod found large concentrations of petroglyphs depicting a range of motifs, placed in a variety of settings on the landscape. By comparing the depicted elements to panels found throughout the rest of the park and the greater Southwest, this study seeks to understand regional influences represented in the iconography. With this study we gauge whether the Mac Stod site was ingrained within locally rooted systems of interaction or may represent an extension of Chacoan influence into the Petrified Forest.

Andrew Boorde, writing in the 1540s, advised the builder of a new house to choose a site which was close to supplies of water and wood but also had a good view. He further recommended having a garden and orchard, while a park full of deer and rabbits was ‘a necessary and a pleasant thing to be annexed to a mansion’. Boorde was emphasising the importance of both practical and aesthetic factors in the siting of a great house, and the interplay between these factors also influenced the evolution of houses, their gardens and parks over time. This developmental journey - from medieval manor house in a village to Georgian country house in a landscaped park - forms the subject matter of this important new book.

Drawing on a wide range of source materials - architectural and topographical, written and pictorial - historian Jane Croom explains how new houses were built, existing houses were remodelled and their immediate surroundings were redesigned between the twelfth and eighteenth centuries. The book starts with a thematic overview of great houses and their settings and then examines their development chronologically. Consideration is given to the: layout and appearance of new houses, gardens and parks at different periods; development of houses to become more outward-looking, symmetrical and compact; updating of older houses to be, or appear to be, more modern; changing arrangements and uses of rooms, and the transformation of gardens and parks into appropriate backdrops to houses. Changes to the wider landscape of fields and settlements are also explored, including the consolidation of estates, enclosure of open fields, and creation of parks.

Reference is made to some 100 different case studies and the book is extensively illustrated with over 300 photographs of extant houses and reproductions of paintings, engravings, maps and plans depicting earlier or lost buildings and landscapes. There are also informative appendices, a glossary of terms and a comprehensive bibliography. This work will appeal to anyone with an interest in historic houses or designed landscapes, whether as a scholar, heritage professional, member of the National Trust or English Heritage, or general reader.