The Second Annual PGECR Country House Group Conference

On the 6th March 2025, in a beautiful Georgian room at The Paul Mellon Centre in Bloomsbury, we held the second annual PGECR Country House Group conference. This was a chance for anyone studying an MA or PhD focused on the British country house in any era to present their work to their peers, get feedback on their projects, and network with one another. We had students from as far as Scotland, Manchester, Birmingham and Devon arriving bright and early, and were welcomed by the fantastic PMC team.

We had such a strong selection of proposals, it was difficult for the selection panel to make decisions. Four panels were decided on, with the aim of presenting a wide range of specialisms, ranging from heritage to history, literature, art and architecture.

We were so lucky to start the day off with a keynote speech from Alexander Collins, Curator of Decorative Arts at The Wallace Collection, talking about the links between country houses and museum collections, and how significant research in this area is - a relief for everyone to hear! We were then given a brief introduction to the library and archive at The Paul Mellon Centre, which is open to everyone (not just students and researchers) and is free to use. You can sit in their beautiful reading room, but a lot of the archive is also digitised and available online. They have such a useful collection for country house researchers, including guide books from every country house open to the public in the UK (getting new ones every ten years), which is a great way to see changes in layouts and research focuses. They also have lists and photos of art and artefacts from country houses not open to the public, and a lot of specialist material on specific parts of country houses, such as fireplaces and doors. Valuable for studying the country house from heritage, art history and architecture history perspectives.

Something people mentioned frequently before and after the conference was how friendly the atmosphere was. It was great that people could feel (fairly!) relaxed presenting their work, and the audience felt comfortable to ask a lot of questions to each panel. The whole day seemed to go really quickly, and at the end people were swapping numbers and asking when the next event would be.

Thank you to everyone who presented a paper, all four of the panel chairs, and to everyone who travelled from far and wide to listen to the papers and ask questions. It was great to see so many new faces, and of course the lovely people who have previously been to our two other events (see the events section). Hopefully there will be more meetups to come, and of course the third annual conference next March.

Examples of 3D printing from Jennifer Savage’s paper, second panel.