Provides readers with fresh insights into the country house and the ways it was shaped by domestic and foreign travel. It brings famous and less familiar houses to life through the aspirations and acquisitions of owners; the admiring or caustic comments of visitors, and the constant flows of goods, people and ideas.

Introduction: travel and the British country house – Jon Stobart1 ‘Antiquity mad’: the influence of continental travel on the Irish houses of Frederick Hervey, the Earl Bishop, 1730–1803 – Rebecca Campion2 From Rome to Stourhead and thence to Rome again: the phenomenon of the eighteenth-century English landscape garden – John Harrison3 Virtual travel and virtuous objects: chinoiserie and the country house – Emile de Bruijn4 Gentlemen tourists in the early eighteenth century: the travel journals of William Hanbury and John Scattergood – Rosie MacArthur5 A foreign appreciation of English country houses and castles: Dutch travel accounts on proto museums visited en route, 1683–1855 – Hanneke Ronnes and Renske Koster6 ‘Worth viewing by travellers’: Arthur Young and country house picture collections in the late eighteenth century – Jocelyn Anderson7 ‘Enjoying country life to the full – only the English know how to do that!’: appreciation of the British country house by Hungarian aristocratic travellers – Kristof Fatsar8 Magnificent and mundane: transporting people and goods to the country house, c.1730–1800 – Jon Stobart9 On the road (and the Thames) with William Cavendish, 1st Earl of Devonshire, 1597–1623 – Peter Edwards10 ‘No lady could do this’: navigating gender and collecting objects in India and Scotland, c.1810–50 – Ellen FilorIndex

Travel and the British country house explores the ways in which travel by owners, visitors and material objects shaped country houses during the long eighteenth century. Bringing together essays on a wide variety of British houses, it provides a richer and more nuanced understanding of the impact of travel on the culture and perception of the British country house, and how this varied according to the identity of the traveller and the reasons for and geography of their journeys. The book begins by exploring the ways in which travel formed an inspiration to build or remodel houses and gardens. Attention has generally focused on the Grand Tour, but this volume also highlights the importance of empire and vicarious travel to China in shaping taste and acquiring goods. Subsequent essays examine the importance of country house visiting in shaping taste through the published accounts of elite visitors, the growing number of guidebooks and the less familiar journals of foreign visitors to British houses. The final essays focus on some of the practical aspects of travel, including the expenditure involved and the logistics of moving people and goods around the country and across Europe and the globe.Suitable for a scholarly audience, including postgraduate and undergraduate students, but also accessible to the general reader, Travel and the British country house offers a series of fascinating studies of the country house that offer fresh insights and serve to animate the country house with flows of people, goods and ideas.