Special Relationship by Jessica Fellowes

Pictured ► Goodwood House, West Sussex. The seat of the Duke of Richmond is a Grade I listed building.

Of all the things that foreigners find puzzling about the British, it is British taste that they find perhaps the most baffling, and if there has been a more potent influence on the aesthetics of the nation than the romantic imagery that surrounds the English country house it’s hard to think of what it might be. From the council-house dweller to the urban loft-living sophisticate, the successful sportsman in his Cheshire mansion or the business tycoon in his Notting Hill villa, myths of English country-house style have subliminally shaped the aesthetic thinking of much of the nation.

Country-house style in its imagined platonic form, if you think about it, exemplifies what the British do best. To start with they are perfect expressions of the interests of their owners, which is to say they are idiosyncratic – idiosyncrasy being a universally admired British virtue. The British don’t take easily to diktats of any kind. While many of these houses were built as status symbols (the equivalent, says Michael Snodin, head of design at the V&A, of owning a private jet today), their owners were minded to impress and mostly nonetheless followed their own tastes and inclinations, so what fascinates still is that no single country house is like any other. What today we think of as old money and traditional taste, we have to remember, was once spanking new money and often very avant-garde, adventurous taste. Today Chippendale is revered as the master cabinet-maker of all time, but once he was the new upstart and it took courage to commission him. ►

Walpole

British Luxury

► So what we have when we look at some of the oldest of our country houses is an almost perfect aesthetic history of the moneyed classes. What we see is a wonderfully layered amalgam of the tastes and fashions as they changed over the centuries. We see the fruits of the fascination of the owners with the grand tour and the classical statues and artefacts they brought back. The owners were usually great travellers, as trade and travel opened up we see the arrival of carpets from the ’Stans, porcelain from China, battered trunks from Beijing, charming sculptures from Bangkok, silks from India, rugs from the Himalayas, possibly all mixed in with a few antiques found while rummaging around in la France profonde. But the owners also commissioned contemporary work from carpenters, gardeners (Capability Brown was little known when he was commissioned to do the landscaping of Chatsworth by the 4th Duke of Devonshire), plasterers, textiles (think of the great tapestries bought by the Countess of Shrewsbury for Hardwick Hall), portrait painters and cabinet makers of the day. But the owners were seldom committed to a single style. You might see a Roman bust, an Italian Renaissance painting and a modern sofa all together just because the owner fancied them. This is what gives the country-house style its allure – it has an authenticity that is impossible to fake and it can’t be done overnight. It has endured because it didn’t remain preserved in aspic, because most of its owners were interested in the contemporary art and design of their day and commissioned the best they could find. And this is why it has also such a hold on the public imagination – it has charm, it has authenticity, it has elegance and, that crucial British ingredient, idiosyncrasy. Still today the most enterprising inheritors of these great estates intuit that their survival depends upon innovation – the need somehow to leverage their distinctive history while at the same time making it relevant to the modern day. At Goodwood Charles March, the Duke of Richmond and Gordon, has done it brilliantly. He took its sporting DNA and turned it into a global business. At Cliveden, at Blenheim, at Althorp, the owners have discerned a hunger for learning, for culture, for education and have devised literary festivals that create a buzz and interest round their ancient homes. At Chatsworth, there are regular exhibitions of avant-garde design and modern art linking the history of the house and the many Dukes of Devonshires’ patronage of creative crafts with the modern day. It is this unbeatable combination of history, authenticity, real stories to tell that makes the allure of the country house still so vivid. It’s why so many luxury houses like to be aligned with them, why Gucci and Hermès and Cartier and all sorts of other purveyors of fine things want to be associated with them. What they have is unique. There is the layered history, the romance, there is the beauty but also, unforgettably, there is the innovation, the genuine interest in creativity and craft forming a magic potion that it’s hard to find elsewhere. British luxury at its best has those qualities in abundance. Think of Smythson, of Burberry, of Mulberry, of our great jewellers and perfumers, of our Savile Row tailors, and they one and all have these quintessentially British traits – a slight eccentricity that seems bred in the bone, coupled with quality, a connection to the past combined with a commitment to innovation, to craftsmanship and quality and a willingness to think out of the box. Today these qualities are admired the world over and one needs to look no further than the paradigm of the English country house to see where it all began.

Above, from the top ► Mulberry – a quintessentially British brand.

The combination of history, authenticity and real stories to tell makes the allure of the country house so vivid, and why luxury brands like Cartier (pictured) want to be associated with them.