An Architecture of Industrialism: The Liddell Family of Ravensworth Castle, Gateshead, 1607-1808

Abstract

This thesis presents an argument for the regionality of architectural functionality within an overarching "Georgian Order" of the eighteenth century British world. Following previous interpretations of such an order put forth by Leone (1988) and forwarded by Johnson to address English material culture (1993, 1996), the concept and character of a regional architecture for the emerging industrial centre of County Durham and Northumberland in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is explored through the close examination of a particular case study, namely the estate of the coal-owning Liddell family at Ravensworth Castle, Gateshead.

As a site no longer maintained by the landed family yet retaining key components of its early modern character, the critical analyses of the house, the wider estate, and its place within the landscape have necessitated the creation of a new methodology for the historical archaeology of buildings no longer extant, placing the sociopolitical and mercantile ventures and objectives of a particular family within their local and wider contexts. In this manner, estate landscapes may be understood as reflections of the specific objectives and circumstances of those acting upon them.

Following contextualisation of the site within the landscape of early modern industrial North East England, the scope of this model is drawn out to explore the nature and opening of élite housing culture by comparison with the colonial Chesapeake region. This comparison is particularly useful where an analogy is drawn between the concept of an open élite (Stone & Stone 1984) as applied to mainland English industrial capitalists (e.g. the Liddells and Bowes) and that of the emerging and later dominating planter class in the American colonies. It is in this placing of local history within its wider context where a regionality may be found and the functionality of dwelling in early modern period may be appreciated.