Sulgrave Manor, Northamptonshire
When we think about achitecture we tend to think about great buildings - those that deffine a generation. The thing that we don’t think about is the people who had to live with them. Sulgrave Manor is a small tudor manor house in rural south Northamptonshire (it also just happens to be the ancestral home of George Washington as it was built by his five times great-grandfather). Lawrence Washington started building the house in 1539, he was a wealthy land owner and wool merchant - a self made man. Sulgrave shows us how the upper middle classes lived 400 or so years ago.
Originally it was a tudor long house - one room thick but about 180 feet long. Sadly time has changed this and in the 18th century the east wing was dismantled and rebuit on the north side of the house - thus making it “L”shaped today. Nevertheless what remains is not only impressive but also homely. Tudor gentlemen loved to show off and Lawrence Washington was no exception. For example we can see some red bricks - the chimney at the eastern end of the building is the only place that they can be seen. In tudor times red bricks were a new building material and very expensive, each brick was hand made. In character for the age Lawrence had them placed on the highest point of the house so that people passing by could see from a great distance that it was the home of a wealthy man.
We have to live with architecture not just look at it and admire it and at Sulgrave we can see how people lived.
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