Hi, everyone. And welcome back to Britain under the microscope.欢迎回来【闲话英伦】Hi, 安澜.

Hi, Lulu. Hi, everyone.

Hi everyone. You sound a bit nasal.

I've got a little bit of a cold.

Okay. I suppose it adds a different type of charm.

Yeah. And it's a good thing. It's audio, I don't look that great at the moment.

All right. So, chitchat aside, let us get into today's topic. You know, when a lot of Chinese people when they think about British or English drama就很多人看英剧的时候, I think they start with, you know, what you call it? Big houses, servants, lords, ladies…

Yeah. Kind of like sort of period drama.

对, 你们管那个叫period drama, 有点时代剧那个意思。

So for example when I was watching Downtown Abbey.

Yes.

唐顿庄园. And also some episodes of Miss Marple like Agatha Christie's, 阿婆的一些都是这种大庄园里面。

Yes. So it’s that time, it's the early 20th century. It's the era of the manor house.

I thought today let's focus on that. What did you say? You called them Manor houses.

Well. There's lots of different names for them. You can call the manor houses, country houses or stately homes.

Manor is m-a-n-o-r.

Yeah.

What does that mean “Manor”?

Well. The manor was basically the big house and the land around it.

就是一个像庄园这种感觉。对吧

Yeah. So, we would still say, for example, the lord or lady of the manor.

By the way, statistically and realistically, how many British people still live or still own that type of manor houses?

Very very very very few.

It's not just, I mean just being rich, is not enough, is it?

No.

据我所知, 他好像是要有什么原来的那种贵族aristocrats。

Well. You get some rich people that they do buy these big houses, they probably don't own much of the land around them. But the thing is - incredibly expensive to keep. And normally if you're looking at more of a traditional manor house, it comes with a lot of responsibilities.

Responsibilities? I thought that's just a private home, you just take care of it like we do to our houses or flats.

No, traditionally being the lord of the manor means that you have very close ties to the village, because the land is so big or it was so big that they would have its own little industries, it would have its own farms. And, it comes with a lot of responsibilities for the villagers, the people who live nearby.

Oh, that's why. I'm sure a lot of you when you are watching TV shows like Downtown Abbey think about Lord Grantham.

Yeah.

He felt a tremendous sense of responsibility to the village.

Exactly. There is that expectation that if you are the lord of the manor, that you would also be putting a lot of money, a lot of support into the local community.

就像一方领主的那种感觉, 是吧? Lord and what if it's a woman then lady?

Lady of the manor. Yeah.

Would people actually call you “my lord” “ my lady”?

Well, no.

Perhaps not.

No, probably not. Not unless you were an actual lord.

“My lord” “My lady” this is how people used to address or still do aristocrats.

Yeah. That's a particular type of aristocrat more often than they might call you “Sir” or “Ma’am”.

“Ma’am”?

Yeah, m-a-a-m. American pronunciation is ma'am.

It's like Madam.

Yeah.

But here it means sir and ma'am.

Yeah.

I see, I see. So it's like a respectful way to address lord and the lady of the manor.

Yeah. But in probably most cases now, they call them just by their names.

I see. So in the past, when these rich people or aristocrats, they actually lived in these stately homes or manor houses, do they just live forever in the countryside?

No, no, of course not. They were rich enough that they would actually have townhouses for when they stayed in the city. So you have your country house and you also have your townhouse.

That's where “townhouse” comes from.

Yeah.

Because nowadays townhouses are also very expensive.

Exactly.

Townhouses were used mostly during the summer months when all of the aristocrats would come and gather in London. And country houses would be used at weekends and mainly as estates to generate income.

Estates, nowadays we would say real estate, 不动产, 我们现在说real estate房地产, so estate is basically their property.

Yeah. It’s just another word for property.

When did they actually start building these country houses?

Well, they started centuries ago. They originally started as small castles in medieval times.

就中世纪的时候是小的城堡。They certainly - many of them were certainly big enough to be small castles.

Well, exactly. When you look at medieval history. It was all about the king fighting the nobles. These nobles would actually have a lot of power. They would actually have their own small armies.

And this went on for how long?

Well, it went on until probably about the 16th century. And it’s at that time when England was at peace, there were many civil wars, so powerful men started to create their own country houses, that were a little bit more luxurious, a little bit more comfortable.

Yeah, but why is it that nowadays you just don’t see people living in them anymore? I bet it’s because it’s very expensive to keep.

It is. Country houses started to decline in the 19th century. That is when taxation increased.

So for centuries, there was no such thing as income tax.

I see.

You can imagine you just gathering all of this money and you could put it into property.

Mhm.

And it’s around this time that agriculture started to decline as well.

So the farms and all this little production that they have industry that they are having is affected.

Yeah. It just wasn't that profitable anymore. And that's actually, you mentioned about Downtown Abbey, that's actually part of the plot. Where was it Lord Grantham, he married an American woman.

Yeah.

And that's what happened, Male aristocrats used to go to America to find rich American women to marry.

I think this is a very sort of typical setup. The man who has the title or have the title, but not really a lot of money. And they were hemorrhaging money on their estates. So they had to find somewhere to get the money. So they marry a woman from America with money, but not so much like title and prestige in the old world.

Exactly.

So it used to work out quite nicely. I would say the most famous example of this was Winston Churchill.

Winston Churchill?

Yeah. Winston Churchill's father was an aristocrat, but his mother was a rich American.

所以丘吉尔他们家他父母也是这样的一个setup.

Pretty much, yeah. Winston Churchill was technically half American.

I see. Interesting de facto to know.

Yeah.

And I would imagine the other reason why those manor houses started to decline, you know, when you watch Downtown Abbey, you saw all these servants.

Yeah.

It's almost like a company of all these serving people, but I guess in the new world people no longer wanted to go into this sort of service as a being called a servant and made a footman.

Exactly. After the World Wars, many people no longer wanted to work in these big houses. They wanted to work in other industries instead. So this became even harder for the owners, not only did they have to look after the upkeep of these big houses, but they couldn't even find people who were willing to work in these big houses.

You can see that in Downtown Abbey, the plot. The older servants, they were really proud of what they did, were doing. They were proud to be part of the big household. But the younger servants are like there's no way I wanna be a servant forever.

Well, exactly.

So, this is what happened to many of the country houses, many were sold and many unfortunately were demolished.

That's a pity, because a lot of them were really pretty, so they were just demolished.

Yeah. In the early 20th century, many were just demolished, and in some cases, some of the country houses, the entire furniture, the entire interior design in some places was actually sold to rich Americans.

So, in some parts of America, you can see entire rooms from British country houses.

I just got a whole container just moved an entire room to America.

Pretty much.

Interesting, a bit of culture, I guess.

Exactly.

So far, we talked about the basics, the background, how they thrived, and how they went into decline.