Whether we have the unique chance to visit one ourselves or we just know them from British documentaries and period dramas,

the English country house is far more than just a house. It's a world unto itself combining architecture, evolving style and decor, and often

generations of family history. And in many ways, the country house itself is a document of social change

and shifts of power throughout hundreds of years of British history. Country houses evolved from four to five

castles to manor houses and then to the grand estates we began to see in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Following the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, her son Prince Albert took over the crown as

Edward the 7th and ushered in a new world,

which was vastly different from that of his mothers.

It was the Edwardian Age.

And one of the great institutions that flourished during this age was the great country house,

the Edwardian country house.

And as we shall see, it was a world of elegance and indeed eccentricity.

Music Hello, I'm Carl Raymond, the host of the Gilded Gentleman History podcast where every two weeks we journey into corners light and dark for a look at America's Gilded Age, Francis Bellepac, and England's late Victorian

and Edwardian eras.

The great country houses that we see in sprawling period films and television series, including

the shooting party, Gosford Park, and indeed, even

Downton Abbey, all show us multiple worlds intersecting and colliding. A country house was more

than just a house. It was an entire estate, a world that beyond just upstairs and downstairs

included the workers and the lives of those who kept the estate

as well from gamekeepers to gardeners.

Historians have noted that the Edwardian Country House represented a moment that was perhaps

the pinnacle of Country House life. Britain, fueled by the wealth of empire and industry, built new estates or adapted old ones

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