Edward III chose the chapel in Windsor Castle to be the centre of his new Order of the Garter. A college of secular canons was founded to serve it, and benefactions of the king and other companions of the Garter provided an annual income of about £600. Many of the canons were royal clerks. Statutes drawn up for the college in 1352 by the bishop of Winchester gave control of administration, under the chapter, to three officials elected annually from the residentiaries. Of these three, the treasurer was concerned with finance, especially disbursements, the steward with estate management and collecting revenue, and the precentor with the chapel and its services. Chief of the treasurer's duties was paying wages to members of the college, but he was also responsible for all expenditure made by himself and other officers, except the precentor, and was finally accountable for revenues, which, although collected by the steward, were delivered to him. Important among sources of revenue were eleven appropriated churches and three manors. Estates In Berkshire and Buckinghamshire were at first managed directly, but by 1361 all except two nearby manors were at farm. With regard to estates at farm, the steward's duties were to arrange leases, make occasional visits of Inspection and collect rents. Towards estates under direct management his responsibilities were heavier, Including constant economic supervision, and holding court. Local officials held office for long periods, and the steward had a permanent lay helper, the steward of the courts. The income of the chapel itself (offerings and gifts) was collected by the precentor who paid from it for the upkeep of the chapel and the services. Accounts of central and local officials were audited annually at Windsor by the dean and two other elected residentlaries, helped with manorial accounts by an outside auditor.

Coleshill House was a much admired seventeenth-century country house which the architectural historian John Summerson referred to as ‘a statement of the utmost value to British architecture’. Following a disastrous fire in September 1952 the remains of the house were demolished amidst much controversy shortly before the Coleshill estate including the house were due to pass to the National Trust. The editor of The Connoisseur, L.G.G. Ramsey, published a piece in the magazine in 1953 lamenting the loss of what he described as ‘the most important and significant single house in England’. ‘Now’, he wrote, ‘only X marks the spot where Coleshill once stood’. Visiting the site of the house today on the Trust’s Coleshill estate there remains a palpable sense of the absent building. This thesis engages with the house that continues to exist in the realm of the imagination, and asks how Coleshill is brought to mind not simply through the visual signals that remain on the estate, but also through the mental reckoning resulting from what we know and understand of the house. In particular, this project explores the complexities of how the idea of Coleshill as a canonical work in British architectural histories was created and sustained over time. By considering how past owners of Coleshill subscribed to the notion of the canonical house this thesis contributes new knowledge about architectural ideology and practice in the long eighteenth century. Furthermore an examination of the pivotal moment when the house was lost in the mid-twentieth century sheds new light on how approaches to historic architecture impacted on ideas of national heritage at the time. This allows us not only to become more cognizant of the absent house, but the practice of formulating architectural histories is itself exposed to scrutiny.