The stately homes of England
How beautiful they stand!
To prove the upper classes
Have still the upper hand
How wonderful that many of Britain’s glorious stately homes still survive in the 21st century for everyone to enjoy. They were even immortalised in verse by that most English of gentlemen, Noel Coward, in 1929, who unashamedly changed part of an earlier poem, The Homes of England, writing: “The stately homes of England, how beautiful they stand, to prove the upper classes, have still the upper hand.”
Composed in 1827 by Felicia Hemans, who coined the term ‘stately home’, the third and fourth lines originally read: “Amidst their tall ancestral trees, o’er all the pleasant land.” By 1929, however, the power and wealth of the upper classes, owners of the great…
