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Townhouse (Great Britain)


Townhouse in British usage originally refers to the town or city residence, in practice normally in London, of a member of the nobility or gentry, as opposed to their country seat, generally known as a country house or, colloquially, for the larger ones, stately home. The grandest of the London townhouses were stand-alone buildings, but many were terraced buildings.

In modern usage for marketing purposes, British property developers and estate agents often call new city terraced houses, townhouses, following the North American usage of the term, to aggrandise modest dwellings and to avoid the negative connotation of cheap terraced housing built in the Victorian era to accommodate workers. The aristocratic pedigree of terraced housing, for example as survives in St James's Square in Westminster, is widely forgotten. The term is comparable to the hôtel particulier which housed the French nobleman in Paris.

Historically, a town house was the city residence of a noble or wealthy family, who would own one or more country houses, generally manor houses, in which they lived for much of the year and from the estates surrounding which they derived much of their wealth and political power. Many of the Inns of Court in London served this function, for example Gray's Inn was the London townhouse of Reginald de Grey, 1st Baron Grey de Wilton (d.1308). From the 18th century, landowners and their servants would move to a townhouse during the social season (when balls and other society gatherings took place).

From the 18th century most townhouses were terraced; it was one of the successes of Georgian architecture to persuade the rich to buy terraced houses, especially if they were in a garden square. Only a small minority of them, generally the largest, were detached, but even aristocrats whose country houses had grounds of hundreds or thousands of acres often lived in terraced houses in town. For example, the Duke of Norfolk owned Arundel Castle in the country, while from 1722 his London house, Norfolk House, was a terraced house in St James's Square over 100 feet (30 metres) wide.


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