The Destruction of the Country House 1875-1975

Roy Strong, Marcus Binney & John Harris.

Thames and Hudson. London. 1974. First edition. Hardback; brown cloth-bound boards, dust jacket. 192 pages. 383 b&w illustrations. English. 260 x 210mm. 0.95kg. 0500240949. Very good, in very good dust jacket; light shelf wear to jacket, some wear and rubbing to spine ends and forecorners neatly repaired with tape to verso, slight browning to top-edge, not price-clipped; offsetting to endpapers, slight spotting to half-title, upside-down Sotheran's bookseller ticket to rear endpaper, with the ex libris bookplate of Ralegh Orme Hancock to front pastedown.

A scarce copy of the hardback edition of this groundbreaking book on the destruction of country houses in Britain. The book was published concurrently with the exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. It acted as a call-to-arms to stop the demolition of stately homes that had started in the 19th century and which gathered momentum after the two World Wars when the upkeep of these houses became too expensive and impractical. The campaign garnered much coverage and achieved much success in its aims. Over 300 demolished houses are illustrated in archival photographs and many more are listed in the appendix.