About

Country houses are powerful symbols of national identity, evoking the glamorous world of the landowning aristocracy and its feudal origins. By contrast, this project focuses on a hitherto unidentified group of country houses in the UK and continental Europe: those owned, renewed and sometimes built by Jews and those of Jewish origin. Some are now museums of international importance, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors each year; many more have been demolished or repurposed. A few are modern ruins, hovering still between memory and oblivion.

Individually, these palaces, villas and country houses tell a story of social forgetting and the problematic place occupied by even the most spectacular ‘Jewish’ country houses within nationally constructed heritage cultures. Taken together they illuminate the transformative impact of Jewish emancipation on modern European politics, society and culture. Many have extraordinary art collections and gardens. Some were stages for lavish entertaining, others provided inspiration to the European avant garde. All were beloved homes that bear witness to the remarkable achievements of newly emancipated Jews across Europe - and to a dream of belonging that mostly came to a brutal end with the Holocaust, a trauma that changed the world of the Anglo-Jewish elite in more subtle ways.

This project, which emerges from close partnerships with the heritage sector, is the first attempt to write these houses and their owners back into British, European and Jewish history and to establish their importance as sites of European – and Jewish - memory.

Jewish Country Houses: project timeline

2015	Jewish Country Houses was conceived and launched by a team led by the University of Oxford in partnership with Waddesdon Manor.
2017	A Knowledge Exchange Fellowship awarded to Professor Abigail Green supported the development of the project to establish the Jewish country house as a focus for scholarly research, a site of European memory and a significant aspect of European Jewish Heritage.
March 2018	The first conference on the Jewish Country House was held at the University of Oxford in partnership with the National Trust and Historic England. The conference focused on the development of the intellectual framework and resources of the project.
May 2019	A second Knowledge Exchange Fellowship awarded to Abigail Green supported the second conference on the Jewish Country House which was held at the Villa Kérylos in France, and aimed to expand the European direction of the work, in collaboration with the AEPJ and the Centre des Monuments Nationaux. The Fellowship also supported training for staff and volunteers at relevant properties in the UK and work on a new resource pack.
October 2019	The UK's Arts and Humanities Research Council awarded the research grant - Jewish Country Houses - objects, networks, people (2019 - 2024). Project partners included the AEPJ, Strawberry Hill House, the National Trust, J-Trails, Waddesdon Manor, the CMN, and the universities of Durham and Cardiff.
2021	A Knowledge Exchange Seed Fund grant was awarded to carry out a pilot project, 'Teaching the Holocaust through the Jewish Country House' in partnership with The Holocaust Educational Trust and J-Trails.
2022	A new grant from the Claims Conference supported the Holocaust dimension of the project. Further funding was received from the Martin J Gross Family Foundation and TORCH to enable the commission of new photography by Hélène Binet for the project's new book about Jewish country houses. The project also added a new dimension - an artistic commission at Schloss Freienwalde in Germany, in collaboration with urKultur and funding support from TORCH.
September 2024	The Jewish Country Houses team successfully secured a two-year grant from the University of Oxford's John Fell Fund to ensure the legacy of its work. 'Beyond Jewish Country Houses' will support the development of new grant applications and a new framework for maintaining our organisation and synergies with the heritage sector.

Built in the 1850s by the British gardener-turned-architect Joseph Paxton, the Château de Ferrières is a gigantic prodigy house that expresses the wealth and power of Baron James Mayer de Rothschild in an eclectic, but distinctively European key. The château is sadly stripped out today, but watercolours by Lami give a rare, if idealized, insight into a Jewish country house brought alive by people, light and movement.

the ruins of the old house in nymans garden west sussex image ref 1569012 © National Trust Images/Gary Cosham

The romantic ruins of Nymans are neither as old nor as English as they look: a fact acknowledged by two carved stone shields embedded in the stone wall of the entrance courtyard – one with a Tudor rose, one with a star of David. Like the different iterations of the house itself, these reveal how the aesthetic choices made by German-Jewish Ludwig Messel and his English-born offspring help us understand their integration into English society.

Brno was known as the Austrian Manchester in the 19th century. The leader of the textile industry was Alfred Löw-Beer, whose house ,Villa Löw-Beer, in the Art Nouveau style, visitors can see in Černá Pole district. Close by, his daughter Greta built a house known as Villa Tugendhat (above) which transformed world architecture.

About

Our Research

Video: introducing the project

Aims and Objectives

Annual Report

"The ruins of the old house in Nymans Garden, West Sussex". Image ref 1569012. © National Trust Images/Gary Cosham