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. It provides a richer and more nuanced understanding of this relationship, and how it varied according to the identity of the traveller and the geography of their journeys. The essays explore how travel on the Grand Tour, and further afield, formed an inspiration to build or remodel houses and gardens; the importance of country house visiting in shaping taste amongst British and European elites, and the practical aspects of travel, including the expenditure involved. 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 serve to animate the country house with flows of people, goods and ideas.

Introduction: travel and the British country house - Jon Stobart
1 'Antiquity mad': the influence of continental travel on the Irish houses of Frederick Hervey, the Earl Bishop, 1730-1803 - Rebecca Campion
2 From Rome to Stourhead and thence to Rome again: the phenomenon of the eighteenth-century English landscape garden - John Harrison
3 Virtual travel and virtuous objects: chinoiserie and the country house - Emile de Bruijn
4 Gentlemen tourists in the early eighteenth century: the travel journals of William Hanbury and John Scattergood - Rosie MacArthur
5 A foreign appreciation of English country houses and castles: Dutch travel accounts on proto museums visited en route, 1683-1855 - Hanneke Ronnes and Renske Koster
6 'Worth viewing by travellers': Arthur Young and country house picture collections in the late eighteenth century - Jocelyn Anderson
7 '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 Fatsar
8 Magnificent and mundane: transporting people and goods to the country house, c.1730-1800 - Jon Stobart
9 On the road (and the Thames) with William Cavendish, 1st Earl of Devonshire, 1597-1623 - Peter Edwards
10 'No lady could do this': navigating gender and collecting objects in India and Scotland, c.1810-50 - Ellen Filor
Index