I’m watching a delightful TV show that takes place at several points in history in a British manor house built in c. 1700. In the modern (2019) timeline, the house is in a state of disrepair, I’m guessing because it’s filmed in a British manor house built in c. 1700 that is in a state of disrepair.
The episode I watched last night took place in 1824. In a scene in one of the house’s rooms, it was still looking kind of shabby. For example, the doors into and out of the room showed the same faded and scratched paint of its 2019 counterpart. Obviously the producers couldn’t freshen up the room for the 1824 scenes and then return it to its current state for the 2019 scenes, that would create continuity nightmares. However, what I’m curious about is how the room would have actually looked in 1824. Assuming that the house was a century old at that point, would it have looked like it was a century old? Meaning, would the owners have gone to great lengths to keep the paint fresh, the floors shone, the rugs vibrant, etc.? Or would visitors to such a home expect it to show its age?
I guess what I’m asking is, is anyone around who’s familiar enough with British domestic life in Georgian England, who can discuss the expectations of housekeeping in those days? Would manor owners have spent their time and money keeping their manors as fresh and “new” as possible? Or are/were these signs of age considered signs of a home’s character?
I think it really depends on how rich the home’s owners are. It was certainly possible for a cash-poor aristocrat to live in a house that they couldn’t afford to renovate.
Would a fabulously wealthy person let their house deteriorate as a “sign of character”? I doubt it, although there are stories of misers who are too cheap to spend money (e.g. Ebenezer Scrooge).
The current idea of Georgian or Regency period decoration is that they used fairly muted colours, with occasional highlights including gilding if you were really posh.
From this ‘interior design’ website;
They also used hand-painted wallpaper - including paper painted with arsenic green, which may have contributed to Napoleon’s relatively early death in captivity.
There wasn’t a lot going on in 1824. A couple of minor wars, but they would have little impact on the economy. Napoleon was history and the American colonies had asserted their independence. I would expect the “landed gentry” to be doing pretty well financially.
The house was a hundred or so years old, so would have needed some work, but as said above, it would depend on whether the current owners were both able and willing to spend money on the house. In the TV programme to which you refer, the owners were bankrupt and all the furniture sold off, so I don’t think that the shabby state of the house in either century is a great anachronism.
Ghosts is filmed at West Horsley Place. That is much older than the 1700s and its building history is actually rather complicated.
Also, the interiors of old houses are almost never perfectly preserved snapshots of particular moments in their history. That’s true even for houses famous for being being so. Research almost invariably reveals that their interiors will have been much altered over the centuries. Often the biggest changes have made by later generations thinking that they were reinstating the original look.
In reality large houses have always required a basic level of maintenance if they are not to begin looking rundown. That was especially true when candles were used for lighting. Most owners would at the very least periodically have walls repainted and soft furnishings repaired or replaced. Few new owners, whether inheriting, renting or buying, would make no changes and the cumulative effect of even minor changes over time could be significant.
Sometimes owners wanted the interiors to look new; others wanted them to look old. But, unless they were eccentrics or misers, few wanted them their houses to look rundown. Especially not those for whom it was the biggest struggle to maintain them. It was really only in the twentieth century, when the landed gentry in general were facing tough times, that a certain indifference to such matters was fully embraced. It was no longer their money that set them apart, so they stopped pretending that it did and instead started to pretend that style, taste and authenticity were things money couldn’t buy.
There was a boom in the affordability of textiles in Britain in the 1820s*. Keeping up appearances with new rugs, drapes, upholstery, etc. would have been more in reach of the financially strapped aristocrat then any previous time in history.
*The number of industrial looms in Britain increased from 14,650 to 55,500 between 1820 and 1829.
Wall paint was not the thick evenly coloured formulations of today. Any traditional painted wall would have had varying richness depending on how many coats they wanted to apply. Many also didn’t handle water well, so when dust accumulated over time, repainting was necessary, so you could expect a good room in a good house to have reasonably fresh paint. Painting on trims such as architraves was lead-based and far more durable.
An important part of any servant’s job was do daily or weekly cleaning and brightening of any part of a house that suffered wear and tear. This included things like rewhitening hearths, sanding and washing floors, removing and beating rugs.
In 1824, depending on exactly whose manor house it was, you’d have possibly had a fair injection of wealth from participating in investment in industry, from East India Company shares or booting out your vassals and rationalising your agricultural estate. A lot of this went directly into making your surroundings look as rich as you wanted everyone else to know you were. There was little sentimentality in home furnishing in upper class interior decoration - they wanted it new and up to the minute. The transition from Georgian to Regency design was underway and this beckoned a lighter and more elegant mode in interior design, immediately copied by mass-produced materials for the upper middle class.
The specific answer is that unless there was a very good [i.e. status, family tradition, specific connection] reason for keeping some old element of the house, a manor house of the rich would be kept up to the latest, best maintained appearance it could, esp. in the public areas where those who would judge you had access.
Yes, that’s the key - what was the financial situation of the owners at that time?
If they were mainly dependent on agricultural output - what was the agricultural situation in the early 1800’s? I’m vaguely aware that during the 1800’s there were all sorts of political pushes back and forth about the tariffs on such staples as wheat, meaning depending on climate and politics, a large agricultural estate could be profitable or not. Plus, while some managed to get in on the ground floor of the burgeoning industrial age, many didn’t. By the late 1800’s, the cliche was rich Americans “buying” into a titled English family by marrying the heiress to provide money to prop up the failing estate.
I feel like there’s comedic fodder in there for a play or something. A group of aristocrats in genteel poverty deal with Their American Cousin as he tries to marry into the aristocracy and navigate the minefield of different cultures.
“Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?”