From College Library to Country House is conceived from the perspective of the British aristocracy and gentry whose education centred upon preparing to run the country estate, including house and collections, and will argue for the importance of the library and the book collection in this process. Too often in country house studies the architecture, interior design and art collections have held sway and this programme aims to foreground the College book collections at the disposal of tutors and the subsequent development of the country house library.  Libraries reveal not only the intellectual or recreational interests of past generations, but also how books manifest taste, fashion, and opportunities for display. Book historians and tutors well known in their respective fields will conduct the course, and will consider a broad variety of subjects including book binding, the development of the idea of rare books and of book collections, questions of spatial analysis and mobility, and library portraiture, all in the context of the collections housed in some of the oldest and most complete book rooms in Britain.

This intensive residential course is based in the exceptional surroundings of Clare College* in the centre of the University of Cambridge. Directed by Dr. Andrew Moore, the programme focuses upon a series of iconic libraries. These include the historic private libraries of Houghton Hall created by Robert Walpole, and Holkham Hall, home to one of the greatest private manuscript and printed book collections in Britain, housed today in three of the country’s most important country house library rooms. The course also visits the library designed by James Gibbs for Edward Harley, Earl of Oxford at Wimpole Hall in Cambridgeshire, and Anglesey Abbey, created by the Anglo-American oil magnate Huttleton Broughton, First Lord Fairhaven, both now in the ownership of the National Trust. The course also visits the little known Spalding Gentlemen’s Society, Lincolnshire, founded in 1710  by Maurice Johnson of Ayscoughfee Hall: early members included Sir Isaac Newton and Sir Hans Sloane. The course will include the Old Libraries of St John’s College and Queens’ College; the Wren Library, Trinity; the Pepys Library, Magdalene College; the Parker Library at Corpus Christi, the Founder’s Library at the Fitzwilliam Museum and also historic book collections in the University Library designed by Giles Gilbert Scott.

The course will start with coffee on Monday morning and end on Friday afternoon. Accommodation and all meals for the duration of the course are included in the course fee.