Rich Old Goats
Have you noticed? Tour around your average National Trust property and it soon becomes obvious that previous generations seem to have been fortunate and very well heeled.
It seems nobody lived in poky little houses. They didn't have to look at wood chip wallpaper and sit on cheap MFI furniture. They had beautiful oak panel walls and real leather seats in their well stocked library.
Outside the house would sit in many acres of land, and sometimes many thousands of acres.
All in all the people we chose to commemorate appear to have been wealthy, while the poor and the merely average have passed silently into history unremarked and unremembered.
I like the national Trust parklands, but I have stopped going into the houses for the reasons you state. What I can't stand is some of the sycophantic tour guilds who seem to hold the owners of such palatial piles in such high esteem.
ReplyDeleteYou could always visit Mr Straw's house in Worksop, which has been preserved as it was lived in, in the 20th century.
ReplyDeleteOther than that, I guess that the cramped and filthy conditions that the masses had to endure through the centuries have not survived the ravages of time and would probably be not very appealing to look at.
Hmm. Worksop.. I will add it to my list.
ReplyDeleteAlways pleased when one of my grumbles hit the spot :-)
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