The Rise of the Nouveaux Riches: Style and Status in Victorian and Edwardian Architecture

Contemporary Review, Nov, 1999

J. Mordaunt Crook. John Murray. [pounds]25.00. 354 pages. ISBN 0-7195-6040-3. Prof Crook is a well established architectural historian and has written extensively on the history of palaces, churches, public buildings and country houses, including the great Victorian country houses. In this book he turns from those mammoth new country houses built by wealthy Victorians to the people who lived in them.

These people made their money not just from age-old sources like the law or 'the City' but from Britain's newly industrialised economy - cotton, iron, steel, chemicals. There were fortunes made from the Empire - shipping and South African diamonds, from America and from the stock-market. These 'nouveaux riches' - often the second or third generation of the family which started the business - followed the pattern that went back centuries and left the city, and trade, for the countryside and the leisured life of the landed gentry or the nobility. How did they do it? Why did they do it? The author traces the history of the Rothschilds, Sassoons, Beits, Barings and Guinnesses and with a relaxed style answers these questions.