Spaces of leisure: The English country house and social change in the 1650s

The 1650s is a decade unique in England's history---the only decade without a monarchy---yet it prompted far-reaching social and architectural changes. For the first time, public and individual interest were opposed. Noble and gentle landowners newly used the country house to entertain exclusive elite social circles of leisure. Inside the country house, patron and architect opened vistas out to the land across ranges of entertaining spaces. These changes would last into the early twentieth century; the houses of the 1650s architect John Webb and the twentieth-century architect Sir Edwin Lutyens each offer spaces of leisure with a vista out to the land.; Shifting country house hospitality and design were together sparked by unprecedented social and architectural conditions in the 1650s. After the 1640s Civil War, nobility and gentry lost their close ties to local community and national government; they pursued instead exclusive leisure. The Puritan Parliament introduced individual religious contemplation, rather than parish community feasts. The monarchy was abolished, and political sympathies, rather than high social rank, determined national or local office. In architectural practice, patrons rethought commissions because of heavy financial burdens and could newly employ the court architect, who was no longer engaged on royal projects. Architects were also newly reading Italian treatises with nearly exclusive focus on patron expectations. John Webb, the potential court architect, reworked all aspects of country house design within this new focus on changing patrons' priorities across both elite social circles and architectural practice.; This dissertation studies Webb's country houses in an interdisciplinary context; it argues that changing social expectations sparked shifts in seventeenth-century English country house design to a degree little noted. I pair Webb's buildings, book annotations, and manuscript notes with multiple sources beyond architectural history---from agricultural tracts to etiquette manuals. My methodological models also encompass outside disciplines: architectural theory, cultural geography, sociology, and literary criticism. These sources and methods call for a more integrated study of domestic architecture---integrated across architectural fields and other disciplines as well as across the pre-industrial and industrialized worlds.