Christ Church Special Interest Event

Thursday 11 April - Sunday 14 April 2013

Every Spring Christ Church holds a Special Interest Weekend open to the public. In April 2013 we are having a single topic weekend on the English Country House. Expert speakers will guide you through the architectural development of the country house and its gardens, showing how it has been created, conserved, converted and reinterpreted over the past centuries. Site visits will take you to houses across Oxfordshire and Warwickshire, enabling you to compare and contrast the effect of private, institutional or corporate ownership of some of the region's most famous historic homes. Together, the lectures and site visits will give you a picture of how the great country house has evolved and survived.

The English Country House: A Journey through Time

The English Country House is one of the most celebrated symbols of the nation’s heritage and identity. It is a building type which has become synonymous the world over with architectural achievement, with conspicuous consumption and with the ups and downs of the social distinctions of past eras.

This wide-ranging course does not just examine the architectural history and magnificent contents of the great country houses from the epoch of the Tudors to the era of the Windsors. It also explores how the country house has survived and been reinvented for the 21st century, and how the taxing conservation, business and visitor demands inherent in keeping such complex sites financially viable have been reconciled with keeping a sense of past ownership, continuity and resonance.

Further details of The English Country House: A Journey through Time are available in the conference leaflet, which is attached in pdf form.

If you have any queries or would like a hard copy of the conference leaflet, please email: specialinterest@chch.ox.ac.uk or telephone 01865 286848