Light, sun and air were prized in a way that medieval and Tudor forebears would have found incomprehensible. So were bathrooms.

The balancing act which so many owners of older country houses had to perform was to live in a congenial 'muddle of museum carpets [and] ruined castles' - Harold Nicolson's description of life at Sissinghurst - and still have mod cons and home comforts. The older the house way, the harder that was. By the 1920s light, sun and air were prized in a way that medieval and Tudor forebears would have found incomprehensible. So were bathrooms.

A. Tinniswood, The long weekend (2016), 137