The house used in BBC LWW was a Tudor manor, and that tends to be fairly consistent with the way the house is depicted in other media, therefore I've always imagined it as being a house of Tudor origin which was likely adjusted and adapted over the decades.

https://www.llanvihangelcourt.com/mhistory.html

@narnian78 I get the impression that the suits of armor and likely the books were part of the house before the professor owned it. Remember the book says there were a lot of strange stories about the house and even the professor knew very little about it.

Was the house portrayed more accurately in the BBC series or the Walden film?  I liked both of them, but I wish the BBC had more money at that time so that more of the house could have been shown more clearly. The Walden film with a higher budget made it look quite attractive, although I was quite disappointed when the window was broken by accident.  The BBC’s house may have been more accurate to the book, although Walden’s looked very beautiful (especially the room with the wardrobe), and it made the film visually appealing.

@narnian78  Lewis didn't describe it in great detail, just listed some of the rooms and their contents. Adamson's version in 2005 had some Tudor-looking parts, which could have been from 'Shakespeare's day', but equally could have been built in the long Victorian era to look like Tudor. Collected contents might have been bought by a  successful19th century factory owner!

We don’t usually have houses here in America where Professors live alone.  And the houses here do not usually have servants, although long ago some of the wealthy people had them.  It is usually too expensive for one person to live in a large house and pay for its maintenance.  I knew of a one person who lived alone for years in a large home, but his family was well off financially.  But when it became too expensive to pay the heating bills he had to move to a smaller house. It probably is different in Britain and Europe than here in the U. S., where large houses are considered a luxury.

Posted by: @narnian78

We don’t usually have houses here in America where Professors live alone.  And the houses here do not usually have servants, although long ago some of the wealthy people had them.

The likes of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson both lived in big country houses with massive estates ,,, its just that theirs were maintained and worked on by slaves, not paid servants.

@icarus 

I was speaking mostly of America today. It is true that there were slaves in the past, but here in Michigan wealthy people had servants. In fact I don’t think any of the rich people here owned slaves, although there was a distinct difference between the rich and the poor.  

Also, I will not quote someone by having part of the text in boldface print because it might change the meaning of what they are saying by putting emphasis where it was not intended. If you are quoting someone I think it should be exactly as the person said it with no change in the text. Please don’t change anything of the meaning of what I was saying.

@narnian78 I'm sure Icarus wasn't trying to put words in your mouth. He just bolded part of your sentence because that was the one part to which he was responding and if he'd only quoted that, it would have been confusing out of context. (I don't think he was accusing Michigan specifically of anything either. America is a huge country and I'm pretty sure the historical figures he mentioned were from other parts of it.)

@col-klink 

But I don’t think you should change anything when you are quoting someone else, and that includes their text.  We were taught that in college writing courses, and it is appropriate advice. 

Mod comment: 

If quoting part of a previous post, we can either reduce the quote to just the words we're referring to, or explain at the start of the post which words we're going to answer. 

If for some reason that's not possible, it's quite common to explain in brackets something like "(bolding mine)" or "(spelling mine").

I hope this helps.

Thank you for keeping it polite.  

Posted by: @narnian78

We don’t usually have houses here in America where Professors live alone.  And the houses here do not usually have servants, although long ago some of the wealthy people had them.  It is usually too expensive for one person to live in a large house and pay for its maintenance.  I knew of a one person who lived alone for years in a large home, but his family was well off financially.  But when it became too expensive to pay the heating bills he had to move to a smaller house. It probably is different in Britain and Europe than here in the U. S., where large houses are considered a luxury.

To clarify from this side of the pond, large houses are considered a luxury in Britain as well, and always have been. They were traditionally owned by people who had either inherited them (and associated wealth) down a long line of ancestors, or who through their own efforts had become rich enough to afford to buy and maintain a large property. Most of the large estates in this country became unsustainable for their owners with the economic and social changes of the 20th century, and so many of those properties were sold off and redeveloped, or else preserved by the National Trust or other heritage organisations. But for the vast majority of British people, a big country estate would only be an unattainable dream, then and now. (And nobody has servants these days either, although some people might employ a cleaner or a gardener if they don't have the time or the physical capacity to do those things themselves.)

We don't learn anything about the Professor's background in LWW, but by the time of VDT he's had to sell his big house due to financial problems and move into a flat. From the ending of MN (written later) we learn that Digory's father inherited the house from his (Digory's) great-uncle, who was presumably Digory's grandfather's older brother and had died childless. We don't know how or when the Kirke family came to own that estate in the first place, or where their wealth originally came from. Digory's father becomes rich by the inheritance, we're told, but obviously the family's fortune was precarious, as it somehow runs out in the 1940s, during Digory's time as owner.

I don't get the impression that Lewis thought out the Professor's situation or the house's history in any detail, however, as none of those details are important to the plot — or of much interest to most young readers who will probably just want to get on with the story!  

@courtenay 

The 1979 animated version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe didn’t do much with the Professor’s home. I think the BBC Narnia and the Walden films did a lot more to make the house look more authentic and appealing,  At least it seemed more like an historic place. It was another disappointment for me that the 1979 version looked too much like the 1970’s. At least the other two versions had the time periods of the house and the story more accurately portrayed. I understand that there are limitations of animated productions, but it seems that some animated movies are better than others for realism (like Rankin/Bass’ The Hobbit) even though they were made with very little money.

It is sad when historic homes are lost through development just as it is the case with natural areas that are not preserved. And sometimes the owners of the land do not care if there are cemeteries or burial grounds located on the property.  They are only interested in the money.  I think the same is true of historic homes and their properties.  If they are owned by people who have little regard for what was there before they could be lost. That apparently happened to the Professor’s home in the old world, but in the new Narnia in The Last Battle the Pevensies could see that the house was still there in England .

Did anyone else think that the housekeeper, Mrs. MacReady, was funny?  I thought she was like an old maid schoolteacher with her fussiness. This was shown in the first Walden movie.  C. S. Lewis did have a sense of humor, which was present a number of times in the Chronicles.  The Pevensies called her “The MacReady” and they had to escape her by going through the wardrobe. I have known people who were like her in real life, and I think of her whenever I meet them.  🙂

@narnian78 Mrs. Macready didn't really have any dialogue in the book and we only hear a little about her, so I don't find her particularly funny there. But I did find her funny in the BBC miniseries and the Walden Media movie. That's partly because of the dialogue they gave her and also because the actresses were very funny in the role.

@col-klink 

I think Lewis was intentionally humorous when he had the Pevensies call her “The MacReady” or at least he was trying to be funny even without giving her any dialogue. When she was called that you can immediately think of a stern old lady acting like an old maid schoolteacher although she was apparently married. So it’s difficult not to think of her as amusing.