'Houses live longer than people, usually much longer,' writes Gillian Tindall. Three Houses, Many Lives uses the stories of three very different houses to explore the past.
Neither stately homes nor historical, they are still part of history. They are the houses of middle England, inhabited by farmers, lawyers and vicars, houses that have seen good and bad times and grown like topsy. Gillian uses deeds and parish records, pictures and most importantly the people who have lived within to illustrate how England has changed though the centuries. There is a seventeenth century farmer’s house which eventually becomes a Conservative Club, a rural vicarage in the Cotswolds and a girls’ boarding school whose oak panelling and glorious lawns are denied to pupils, housed in cheerless brick dormitories tacked onto the side.
We meet many of the inhabitants including the widow struggling to make ends meet by selling Lord Chesterfield’s scandalous letters to his son, the farmer who made his fortune from the railway boom, two elderly bachelors and their ever-changing line up of servants and an individual glorying in the name of Marmeduke Gresham. As whenever you delve into things the seven degrees of separation rule applies in with links appearing between seemingly unconnected places. A meticulous researcher, Tindall paints a picture of the English landscape as it is, as it was and as it came to be. If you enjoy programmes like Who Do You think You Are and If Walls Could Talk you will love this book.
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