STATELY HOMES – An endangered species for the ‘Facebook Generation’
Until and unless stately homes drag themselves into the twenty-first Century, they risk becoming an endangered species within a generation.
Whereas many Museums and popular heritage sites in the UK have understood the need to make themselves relevant to, and engage with, today’s audiences (Jorvik
for example) – Stately Homes are still the bastions of an age when it was considered sufficient to open the doors, install some nice ladies of a certain age with sticks so they can point out various treasures and the exploits of the ninth Earl - then essentially, hope for the best.
Today’s audiences have travelled the world, and they want something more than to be awe-struck by a house and a garden. There is so much more that can be done with most Stately Homes than just impressing everyone with stories of ‘the family’ (who really cares in the ‘Facebook’ generation?), the size and value of ‘the collection’ (seen one, seen them all!), the fabulous rooms (yes, but how many rooms can anyone take) or let them just be a place to wander and ‘explore’ (maybe, but without a framework, how valuable is that?).
These visitor ‘products’ at many Stately Homes are undoubtedly a reflection of the rationale for first opening them when they were a chance for us to ‘see how the other half lived’, and a chance for them to show off the families success.
The houses often describe themselves as ‘homes’ to emphasise the ‘still lived-in’ aspect. Its true that people are interested in people, which is why I always maintain that most visitors are much less interested in the date of a commode, than who sat on it and what they used for toilet paper. We want to know how the other half lived, but in ways that we can relate to, not some glitzy, syrupy, alien view of a world entirely unattainable and beyond the experience of 99.9% of visitors.
The trick that is being missed is to limit one’s view of Stately Homes as old and sumptuous houses (almost all are obsessed with ‘the house’). They are so much more in that they are surviving (and curiously ‘lived-in’) manifestations of complete historical (and architectural) entities with their contents intact. The whole assemblage (including all outbuildings, yards, routes, wells, watercourses, boundaries, etc.) may be seen as an integrated artefact that reflects a past (and a present) of a particular sector of society. It is an important sector too that the public want to know about. The families who built Stately Homes were always wealthy; were often important patrons of the arts; often innovators of architectural and horticultural design; often improvers of farming techniques; always employers of servants, contractors, craftsmen and the like and thus had a huge economic effect on their communities.
The building complexes themselves are the architectural manifestations of the internal social hierarchy of the family, visitors and the (often ignored) tiers of resident servants. At Shugborough (Staffs, a Stately Historic Estate managed by the author from 2004-2007) for example, the House is set forward. This reflects the top tier of Society, at the front, in the lead. The adjacent block occupied by the most senior servants is set back 5 metres from this - not as important as the family, naturally. This is however set in front of another block, occupied by the lower ranks of servants which is set back another 5 metres. In this last block, servants slept on the first floor, whilst horses were stabled at ground floor. But, here, yet more hierarchy is reflected, because the higher status riding horses were at the front, in the lead, whilst the lower status carriage horses were stabled at the rear. In other words the whole architectural arrangement of the complex reflects in three dimensions the hierarchy of the people (and animals) that occupied them, none of this obvious until it is pointed out.
Stately Homes have got superb core assets, ripe for modern interpretation. The high quality contents can be integrated into explanations about function, and the spatial arrangements of space, doorways, access routes, roles of servants, supply of consumables etc., making the entire place come alive and providing a rich commentary on the past.
The UK’s leisure-time market-place is fast filling up with better and better interpretation centres, more exciting activities (like swinging about in trees for example) livelier museums, and the customer gets used to (and expects) more and more sophisticated interpretation. So, unless the assets at Stately Homes are made to work much harder, and unless owners become more inventive and more dynamic, then I’m afraid for the generations growing up who now satisfy their urges to ogle on ‘Facebook’ , Stately Homes will become completely irrelevant and largely redundant.
Richard Kemp - 19th February 2008