Episode 20: Alone At Last: Privacy and the Country House

A medieval bedchamber

These days, privacy is high on the agenda.  There are huge concerns over data, images, digital identity and personal space, all of which should be kept private.  But how was this possible in previous ages when almost all of life took place in the presence of other people.  This was as much the case for the social elite as it was for ordinary families.  As court records of divorce cases in the 18th century reveal, very little happened that was not known to servants.  Privacy, as we understand it today, would have been a rare luxury at almost any period before the Second World War.        

In this episode, John and Clive trace the idea of privacy to devotional practices in the Middle Ages.  Kings and other magnates could also escape to hunting boxes and pleasances.   But privacy only became a feature of domestic planning with the introduction of corridors – such an unfamiliar word to the Duchess of Marlborough that the architect Vanbrugh had to explain it to her as a foreign term. There were recluses, hermits and others who wanted to keep themselves ot themselves.  But it was only with the emphasis that the Arts and Crafts Movement placed on “home”, symbolised by the domestic hearth, that architects began to design for what we would now call a normal life.