A field of study: academics are diving into the history of Chatsworth House, in Derbyshire, which is the seat of the Duke of Devonshire.

Master’s of the House

Studying the grandest estates in England used to be an extra-curricular activity. Now, at some universities, it’s the main event

By Rachel Johnson

You’ve watched Downton (filmed at Highclere Castle, Berkshire); you’ve done at least one season of Bridgerton (filmed at Castle Howard, in Yorkshire); you’ve surely toured a stately home or two and boogied to Blur’s 1995 hit, “Country House,” with its deathless hook, “He lives in a house / A very big house in the country,” too many times to mention.

But now you can study country houses too, which makes perfect sense in a nation where you are defined not by where you are going but by where you have come from, especially if that place happens to be an ancestral seat that rolls over several thousand acres and has a four-poster bed slept in by Elizabeth I.