This thesis explores the state apartment in the Jacobean country house – its status, function, use, planning, decoration and furnishing. It does so against various different backgrounds. Firstly, that of the royal progress, during which Tudor and early Stuart monarchs – in particular, James I – would visit private residences around the country. The nature of such visits are explored, using a large amount of primary evidence and drawing upon a full itinerary of James I's reign, compiled for the first time as part of this thesis. A different context, that of royal palaces, is then considered, particular focus being given to the use and accessibility of state apartments. This subject is further explored within the context of the noble household. The use of state rooms beyond and during royal visits is investigated, again using much primary evidence that has been largely neglected before now. It is shown that state apartments in country houses were the focus for elaborate ceremonial, and that they were used for the reception and accommodation of various honoured guests, not just members of the royal family. In the last two chapters of the thesis, the planning, decoration and furnishing of the country house state apartment is considered. It is argued that arrangements developed significantly between the Henrician and Jacobean periods, the state suite evolving from a comparatively simple (and sometimes haphazard) collection of spaces to a cohesively planned and integrated suite – a true apartment. This argument is based on the detailed analysis of 29 sixteenth-century houses (including Thornbury Castle, Theobalds and Hardwick Hall) and 9 houses of the Jacobean period (including Audley End, Hatfield House and Bramshill). Such a study clearly demonstrates that state apartments were undoubtedly the best rooms in a country house, and were used to reflect and further an owner's status and prestige.

Thomas Sackville was a courtier and a politician during the reigns of Queen Elizabeth I and King James I. Shortly prior to his death in April 1608, Sackville began work on his largest architectural project, the transformation of the archbishops' greathouse at Knole, near Sevenoaks in Kent. The house holds a seminal position in the landscape of country houses of the period, and as Sackville's only surviving house, is an important monument to his ambitions as patron. However, Sackville's significance as a patron has often been underplayed, in the same way that his position as a leading politician and a minister of state has often been seen as only a brief interlude between the hegemony of William and Robert Cecil – Sackville's predecessor and successor as Lord Treasurer respectively. The research of this thesis focuses on Sackville's transformation of his house at Knole, highlighting the fact that during his political apogee, Sackville was a leading patron of his day, who employed the finest artisans, craftsmen and artificers available to him. In the historiography of English architectural history, Knole is often sidelined, and seen as the last moment of Elizabethan building practice before the innovations of the Jacobean period. This not only underplays the complexity of the building's development, but also detracts from what Thomas Sackville aimed to achieve during his campaign of building at Knole between 1605 and 1608. New evidence has afforded a fuller insight into Thomas Sackville's role as patron and also the extent to which his numerous intellectual and cultural interests were brought to bear on the transformation of the house. This evidence suggests that what Sackville achieved at Knole was a remarkable synthesis of what was inherited from the existing fabric and what was newly built, and the product of this synthesis was a house that reflected both Sackville's intellectual and political ambitions.

This thesis analyses new evidence for both the architectural and social histories of the late-medieval Archbishops of Canterburys‘ house at Knole in Sevenoaks, Kent. Built and occupied by a succession of archbishops between 1456 and 1538, Knole is today regarded as one of the most significant medieval houses in Great Britain. Using newly discovered summary building accounts the thesis suggests a new interpretation of the building phases of the house. This has reattributed most of the major phases to Archbishop Bourchier (c.1411 – 1486) and suggests that by the time of his death much of the extant fabric had been completed. Significantly it also suggests, for the first time, that Bourchier may have been responsible for building the ranges surrounding Green Court; a part of the house that has previously been attributed to later owners of Knole. The thesis also suggests that of Bourchier‘s successors at Knole only Archbishop Warham (c.1450 – 1532) made any significant alterations to the building and attributes to him the timber-framed ranges around Pheasant Court and the east front, including the Brown Gallery. In addition to its architecture, the thesis also considers how a house like Knole was used by the archbishops and discusses the evidence for its differing functions. It compares Knole to other late-medieval houses and palaces, most significantly to the nearby house at Otford; another property built by the Archbishops of Canterbury. The thesis concludes that, alongside some ritual and business functions, Knole‘s primary role was as a country retreat away from the demands of Court and politics.

This thesis is a study of the social and cultural significance of Standen from the perspective of the Beale family's lived experience of the property from 1890 to 1914. The Beales commissioned architect Philip Webb to design Standen in 1891, they were sole owners of the property until it was bequeathed to the National Trust in the early 1970s. Although Standen is recognised by architectural historians as a fine and complete example of Art and Crafts architecture of the period and is celebrated for its William Morris wallpapers, little is known about how the family experienced the house. Drawing on Henri Lefebvre's theory which understands a user's space as lived and not represented, this thesis moves away from traditional architectural accounts to focus on the family's lived experience and the role they played in the creation of Standen. It analyses family and estate archives, the property and its collection of objects and photographs to reveal that Standen's decorative interior, as an ‘eclectic' mix of styles blending Arts and Crafts with Aestheticism, was interwoven with social and cultural meaning. Representing original and innovative research into the history of domestic interiors and living space, this thesis aims to encourage new ways of engaging with and critically understanding the late-nineteenth century Arts and Crafts Movement.

The grand houses of nineteenth century Victoria have been given only superficial consideration in the literature on Australian architectural history, and it has been assumed that the colonial houses in Victoria simply copied British models. However houses are always designed to accommodate the values, beliefs and customs of the society for which they are built, and their spaces must be arranged to accommodate a variety of both utilitarian and social functions. It might therefore be expected that the different physical, economic and social conditions in Victoria would result in variations from the British models which more closely reflected their colonial context. / This thesis seeks to document, analyse and explain the planning of the grand houses of nineteenth century Victoria. It demonstrates that the form and planning of these grand houses in Victoria did indeed resemble the British models in many ways. This is because both the settlers in Victoria and colonial society were predominantly British, and the settlers could only aspire to respectability, and establish a position in the newly developing social hierarchies, by conformity with British norms. The possession of an appropriate house played an important role in this, and the houses therefore were always based on British models. There was conformity with British practice in the specialization and segregation of functions and spaces in the houses, and in the invariable use of closed corridor planning. However although these British planning conventions were observed, the houses differed in significant ways from those in Britain. This was largely because the colonial upper classes differed significantly from the old upper classes in Britain. A higher proportion of the upper classes in Victoria were new rich, and their houses reflect not only the greater informality of colonial society but also the tendency of the new rich towards ostentation. Their houses were built for maximum effect, even when this at times was in conflict with accepted British attitudes towards ostentation and privacy. This resulted in differences from British norms in the arrangement of the spaces in the houses, which more closely reflected the colonial context. The grand houses in Victoria were not therefore purely British, but were always a colonial hybrid.

In this thesis I explore how physical and socio-cultural factors interact to shape domestic architecture by analysing the form, layout, and construction of houses from Sicily dating from the Neolithic to the end of the Hellenistic period. This time range encompasses two primary domestic building traditions: single-spaced round houses that dominate from the Neolithic through to the end of the Late Bronze Age, and large, multiple-spaced rectilinear structures that characterise the Archaic period onwards. As such the domestic architecture of Sicily provides the opportunity to study not only two distinct ways of building, but also the dynamics within them and the changes that occurred as one evolved into the other during the Early Iron Age: a period of transition that is often studied in isolation or only in relation to the earlier or later context, rather than as an integral part of this island’s history. A critical analysis of building techniques and materials in the context of available resources and their material properties alongside local environmental conditions reveals correlations between the choice of materials, construction techniques, and topographical and climatic conditions, as well as the form taken by the building as a whole. Comparative analyses were also carried out of house size, form, and degree of subdivision within and between the building traditions. The picture presented shows an increase in total size and subdivision (despite the relatively stable size range of individual spaces within the houses) from the Neolithic to the Hellenistic period and implies a developing desire for options to separate people and activities. Finally, close diagrammatic studies of the layout and spatial organisation of the houses bring to light the structuring of these domestic spaces: the use of architectural features and artefacts to provide a sense of division in single-spaced buildings; greater layers of access and control of movement incorporated into the larger, rectilinear houses with their multiple spaces; and the arrangement of these to allow for the lighting of interior rooms. Combined with the results above, these reveal patterns in the development of building traditions on Sicily and how they relate to, encompass, and entangle the dynamic socio-cultural and physical parameters that make up the wider landscapes they are a part of: notions of identity and its formation and transmission, social structure and stratification, topography and climate, and material structural properties. Altogether this allows for the development of a deeper and more holistic understanding of the relationship between building and living, of how physical and socio-cultural parameters integrate and influence the construction of houses, and how these all come together in the building traditions that are both shaped by us and shape us.