Architectural History is more than just the study of buildings. Architecture of the past and the present remains an essential emblem of a distinctive… - Dana Arnold

[B]iography is an essential part of human memory. We think about ourselves in terms of what we have done – our identity is constructed around our past. Are history and biography linked or just two parallel strands? Biographers and historians make choices about how to frame their subject, they draw together fragments to present a possible glimpse of the unattainable whole. An historian might have a thesis or method which drives his/her enquiry whereas a biographer has, perhaps, a particular view of an individual they wish to present. Neither presents the truth, only an interpretation.

I am interested in how we interrogate architecture in terms of its social functions and meanings. Architectural historians writing on eighteenth and early nineteenth century Britain have tended to see social history as the answer to this question. But the social history of architecture or the histories of specific social groups which operated in and around the architecture or building(s), or indeed the spaces created by them or for them, provide only a backdrop or loose historical context.

[A]rchitecture is more than a stage for the acting out of these performances. It offers a space for other social groups and kinds of social interactions. It is also important to remember that in examples such as the country house it was home to a large number of residents representing a variety of interests.