A stunning visual record of our most spectacular & scenic country estates that were broken up for sale & lost for ever. A sweeping country estate with grand house & spectacular gardens & park would not be the first impression of a visitor to modern suburban Watford. But well into the twentieth century that was exactly what was there
- the magnificence of the Cassiobury estate of which only a modest municipal park survives. Underneath the expanse of Rutland Water lies the once splendid Normanton estate while Deepdene in Surrey is now memorialised only by an ugly office block. Fortunately at least photographs live on to remind us of how our landscape looked before death duties mining subsidence & sometimes the plain impecuniousness of the black sheep in the family took their toll & forced the break-up of all too many historic landed estates. In this elegiac book a successor to Aurum's Lost Victorian Britain John Robinson surveys 20 of the most egregious losses from Costessy in East Anglia to Lathom in Lancashire & shows how the deer park the home farm the parterre & the cottage garden gave way to the power station the motorway & the caravan park.