American travelers have often been to London. It’s easy to fly to, they speak English—in short, it’s an easy place to go on vacation. And when they are in London, many go to Oxford or Cambridge—easy to get to by train. Maybe they take a tour to Stonehenge.
But there are lots of place in England that most Americans never get to, because, simply, they aren’t that easy to get to—especially if you don’t want to rent a car and risk driving in a country where you drive on the other side of the road (which is actually easier to adapt to that you would imagine—but the idea is certainly intimidating).
Sadly, this means that most American travelers in England don’t visit the so-called Stately Homes that dot the English countryside: the great country houses of the British aristocracy, with their fabulous gardens, amazing art collections, and long and often entertaining histories.
And it is particularly sad for LGBTQ+ travelers, because many of the entertaining histories include fascinating (and fun) LGBTQ+ stories. Is this because the British aristocracy was particularly gay? That would be hard to prove. But it is true that we know much more about the lives of aristocrats than other people, and perhaps also that aristocrats through history have always felt freer to break society’s rules than other people. So they are a rich fount of LGBTQ+ history.
There are many great examples in England. Indeed, there are a number of great houses where the LGBTQ+ stories took place that we all know from literature, movies, and TV. Some examples are Shibden Hall, in Halifax (Yorkshire), where Anne Lister, known as Gentleman Jack during her life and on TV, carried on her experimental lesbian life in the early 19th century; Madresfield Court (passed down by inheritance since 1192!) where the real story of Brideshead Revisited took place; Blenheim Palace, built by Sarah Churchill (yes, that is Winston’s ancestor—he grew up there!) who was one of the three women in the love triangle we know from The Favourite; and Knole, the largest of all Stately Homes (said to have 365 rooms, 52 staircases, and 7 courtyards) which—along with its cross-dressing lesbian heiress—which inspired Virginia Woolf’s Orlando.
If I had to recommend two to visit, one would certainly be Madresfield, with its moat, its private chapel, and the four avenues of trees that lead to the house, one from each direction—which is to say that it is four times as grand as Tara in Gone With the Wind. This is where author Evelyn Waugh carried on his romance with an entire aristocratic family, the Lygons (known in the novel and TV series as Flyte). Waugh is close to frank (considering the period) about his love affair with the son Hugh (Sebastian) and about Sebastian’s sad death from alcoholism (in real life probably caused by inner conflict about his sexuality). But he entirely omits from his novel the family’s real gay scandal: the story of the father, the Earl of Beauchamp, a very prominent aristocratic (but reforming) politician who was forced into exile when his many gay love affairs were revealed to the king.
My other favorite is far less grand. It is a farmhouse in the South of England, bought by Virginia Woolf’s sister, the painter Vanessa Bell, who lived there with her gay baby-daddy, the painter Duncan Grant, and housed a continually changing cast of Bloomsbury characters over the year. The house is still packed with art by Grant, Bell, and other Bloomsbury figured; indeed, many pieces of furniture and surfaces were painted as well. And the whole place still seems to breath with the presence of creative people—and their love affairs, especially Grant’s, because he had many lovers, including most of the other major male Bloomsbury figures, but also many others. There is still a male nude by Grant on an easel in the house, and it seems (to me, at least) to symbolize the spirit of sex, love, and creativity that animated the community that centered there and still seems to linger in the air….
