The daily schedule for the Attingham Summer School combines house visits and scholarly lectures given by noted experts. Each day on the course was extremely rigorous and demanding, as we packed twenty-three lectures and thirty-six house visits into the eighteen-day program. The average day began with breakfast at 7:30 and did not conclude until nearly 10:00 in the evening. While most days had both lectures and tours, we had several days in which we managed to visit four houses in a single day! 

Our lectures concentrated on the various aspects of the English country house, including textiles, paintings, furniture, architectural elements, and preservation. Additional lectures focused on the British aristocracy, country house gardens, and the social and political context which influenced the developments of the English country house between the Elizabethan era and the twenty-first century. Noted lecturers included our three program directors, in addition to John Wilton-Ely, Martin Drury, Tim Knox, and Anthony Wells-Coles. 

Our house visits and tours were undoubtedly the most exciting and rewarding element of the Summer School, as they provided the best opportunities to examine and discuss subjects relating to our diverse interests, which in my case were furniture and architecture. Frequent seminars conducted during the site visits by experts on furniture, paintings, silver, and ceramics further augmented our understanding of the development, appearance, and significance of these objects. 

The majority of the properties we visited were owned and maintained by the National Trust (although some owners still lived in a private wing of their property), but others were privately owned or owned by private foundations or trusts. Tours of publicly owned properties were led by the head curators or directors of the sites, an expert--such as Geoffrey Beard, whose tours helped strengthen our understanding of a 
particular subject--or sometimes our program directors. Most tours of the private homes were 

Blackistone, Mick. Dancing with the Tide: Watermen of the Chesapeake
Booth, G. W. Maryland Boy in Lee's Army: Personal Reminiscences of a Maryland Soldier in the War 
  Between the States, 1861 - 1865
Bourne, Michael Owen. Historic Houses of Kent County: An Architectural History, 1642 - 1860
Bourne, Michael and James J. Berna. History of Airy Hill, Chestertown, Maryland, (1688 - 1996)
Chapelle, Howard I. Notes on Chesapeake Bay Skipjacks
Chappell, Helen. Chesapeake Book of the Dead: Tombstones, Epitaphs, Reflections and Oddments of the 
   Region
Clark-Lewis, Elizabeth. First Freed: Washington, DC in the Emancipation Era
Cuttler, Dona L., compl. Montgomery Circuit records, 1788 - 1988, Methodist Episcopal, Methodist 
   Episcopal South and United Methodist
Cuttler, Dona L. and Dorothy J. Elgin. History of Poolesville
Danson, Edwin. Drawing the Line: How Mason and Dixon Surveyed the Most Famous Border in 
   America
Echenbarger, William. Walkin' the Line: A Journey from Past to Present Along the Mason-Dixon
Elfenbein, Jessica I. Making of a Modern City: Philanthropy, Civic Culture, and the Baltimore YMCA
Feldstein, Albert L. Feldstein's Historic Coal Mining and Railroads of Allegany County, Maryland
Fish, Peter Graham. Federal Justice in the Mid-Atlantic South: United States Courts from Maryland to 
   the Carolinas, 1789 - 1835
Fogle, Patricia A. Frederick County, Maryland, Church and Cemetery Records, vol. 4
Fuller, Marsha Lynne. St. Mary's Catholic Church Records: 1818 - 1900, Hagerstown, Washington 
   County, Maryland
 

Smarting with five wasp stings, 
I strolled about Westminster Hall 
through the rambling cemetery, 
comparing the two graves of Poe-- 

while towering behind the church, 
like an upstart promoted to supervisor, 
a newly constructed office building 
sneered down upon the Conqueror Worm. 

That day was the Fourth of July. 
That evening, in the Inner Harbor, 
families huddled under umbrellas 
craned at fireworks in a drizzle. 
 
 
 

their furnishings and architecture were most beneficial to my understanding of the development of the neoclassical style in Maryland. 

The Attingham Summer School is the longest running of the three programs offered by the Attingham Trust. The Trust also offers the Attingham Study Week, a nine-day course that focuses on homes and art collections in different regions of the United Kingdom and Europe, and the Royal Collection Studies, an intensive eight-day course based at Windsor Castle for the examination of the fine and decorative arts in the Royal Collection.