The Manor Houses of Dorset

The Manor Houses of Dorset
By Una Russell and Audrey Grindrod
Published by The Dovecote Press £25 (Hardback)
ISBN 978 1 904 34952 5

What a treat this book is! Here are 75 Dorset manor houses each one carefully researched by the joint authors and beautifully photographed in colour by Bournemouth-based Merle and Alan Graham.

Don’t expect a sort of Pevsner-ish in-depth architectural guide – you’re not expected to know your entablatures from your pilasters, rather, this is a book for anyone who has ever driven by one of the county’s manor houses and longed to know something about its history and the people who lived there in the past and those who are lucky enough to live there today. In many ways the story of the county’s manor houses is the story of the people who lived in them.

Needless to say, the houses are wonderful survivors and superb testimonies in brick and stone to the unknown craftsmen who built them. However, they are, first and foremost, homes where a now largely forgotten gentry once raised families, sometimes fell in and out of love, got into debt, lost sons in war, and, quite often it seems, contested wills. The result is a book that is as much about people as it is about bricks and mortar.

As for the authors, neither Una Russell nor Audrey Grindrod had written a book before. In fact, Una and Audrey had been teachers in a previous life, but finding themselves living in Briantspuddle after retirement and sharing a common interest in their love of Dorset and its country houses they decided to embark on a study of the county’s manor houses. They took seven years going round the county making notes and talking to owners and the result is The Manor Houses of Dorset.

Now, the last attempt to tell the story of Dorset’s manor houses dates from the 1860s so the question must be: has this new book been worth the wait? The answer is an emphatic yes.