The StatelyHome Tour
Just why do you suppose it was that the aristocracy took up the practice of visitng stately home? To commune with nature? Escape the social whirl of London? Not a bit of it! They were simply nosey Parkers, one and all. One reason the gentlemen, at least, began visiting was to discover what their friends had found on their Grand Tours to Europe. By the end of the 16th century, these scholarly and/or artistic souveniers began to enhande the reputations of their owners, branding them as men of taste, their ability to acquire such items confirming both their wealth and social status. Sir Walter Cope's house in London held his collection of fine paintings and boasted an apartment stuffed with "queer foreign objects." It was the first such collection to be well documented and boasted two teeth of a seahorse, a rhino horn, an Indian chain made from monkey's teeth and other such oddities. These collections became known as "cabinets of curiosity" or "closets of rarities." John Tradescent the Elder (d. 1638) had his Grand Tours sponsored by the Duke of Buckingham and opened his collection to visitors for a sixpenny admission. The collection later formed the core of the Ashmolean Museum, founded at Oxford in the 1680's.
Indulging one's curiousity moved out to the country, and stately home, during the late 17th century, when a great building and remodelling of ancestral homes was undertaken by much of the aristocracy and collections were moved from London. The nobility took to visiting each others homes in order to see what design innovations their friends had employed before embarking on their own architectural projects. Paintings, murals, wainscotting, staircases, gardens and so forth were examined at such places as Chatsworth and Burghley. Soon, homeowners were weekly being hounded by uninvited aristocratic guests. Since, however, these guests were often friends, or at the very least acquaintences, of the homeowner, they were taken the houses by their hosts. However, new rules of etiquette had to be introduced when dealing with total strangers, no matter that they were of the same social class.
The origins of
For the visitors, it was this shared social distinction which allowed them to believe that they would be welcome upon arrival. Senior members of the household staff were soon being assigned to conduct the tours for visitors less well known to the family, and these staff expected some sort of payment for their services.
