Talk:Grand houses

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Title capitalization

The capitalization of the header seems a little odd. Shouldn't it be "Grand and great houses", or am I missing something? --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 02:50, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

You're missing nothing, but I think the title is redundant. "Grand houses" would be fine. We have Grand old hotels. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:19, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

That's true as well. Don't "grand" and "great" mean basically the same thing, especially in this context? --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 03:40, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

Yep. Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:16, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

I think Stately homes would be a better title & would move this article there.

Stately homes, châteaux and Schloss is currently a redirect to this. I think that is too complex & would delete that redirect & likely create redirects for chateaux and schloss. Pashley (talk) 13:48, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

At the moment we don't restrict the content to stately homes, at least what I can see. Do we want to? Or wait a minute, Wiktionary gives "country house". My dead-wood dictionary agrees, restricting the term more than Wiktionary. Are we moving away grand houses in cities (at the time of building – I suppose Versailles was indeed a "country house"). –LPfi (talk) 17:17, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

We already have Castles and at #Budding or restricting entries? below I suggest moving many listings to Palaces. If we did that, what was left would fit Stately homes. Pashley (talk) 17:45, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

OK, if you say so. I am not sure about the meanings of "palaces" and "stately homes", but it seems you are right – provided Palaces is created as a real page and content moved to there. –LPfi (talk) 18:35, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

Is there a very specific definition of "stately"? What's wrong with "grand"? Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:47, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

I prefer "stately home" because I have fairly often heard that phrase but not "grand house". One site has:

A stately home is generally considered to be a large, old house that is often open to the visiting public.

The Collins Dictionary defines a stately home as 'a very large old house, especially one that people can pay to visit.'

Merriam-Webster has a similar definition: 'a large and impressive old home that has an interesting history and that can usually be visited by the public.'

The Cambridge Dictionary, meanwhile, focuses on the interiors, stating that a stately home is 'a large, old house that usually has beautiful furniture, decorations and gardens.'

https://www.homesandantiques.com/interiors/homes/stately-homes/what-is-a-stately-home Pashley (talk) 19:52, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

OK, I haven't heard such a phrase as having such a specific meaning, but it sounds like the term we're looking for. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:57, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

U.S.A.

I've added 3 in the New York area. The descriptions should probably be pared down. Anyone who's familiar with grand houses of movie moguls and stars in L.A./Beverly Hills, please add some. I also added the Hearst Castle because I know about it, though I haven't visited (drove past it on the coast). Also add any grand mansions of antebellum slaveowners. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:57, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

Just saying — this article could get pretty long. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 18:30, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

Very long indeed. At that point, it could be subdivided geographically into new articles. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:04, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

Yes, or perhaps divided based on category, if it seems better at the time. Categories and geography could be the same thing in many cases. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 21:08, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

I can think of more than a few more for the UK. (In only listed the more prominent ones in this article)ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 10:09, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

Length of listings

Many listings here are quite long & some overlap with listings elsewhere, e.g. Grand houses#Mukden Palace & Shenyang#Mukden Palace have reams of identical text. I think we should be putting most of the details in destination articles and aiming to reduce this article to mainly Wikivoyage:One-liner listings. Other opinions? Pashley (talk) 12:26, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

Indeed. The listings here should contain just what is needed for somebody to get interested and hit the link to the listing in the destination article – which is what should be linked, not the external site. –LPfi (talk) 12:49, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

I've trimmed a bunch of listings. More could be done if someone wants to try. Ground Zero (talk) 08:20, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

Budding or restricting entries?

This article is growing, as there are many grand houses around the world. We have no formal limit for number of entries in an article, but the marker counter has a technical limit of 99. We could consider whether to bud off part of this article to a sub-topic. Could it be done by country? Or by period? Or some other category? Should the listings in this article be restricted in some way? Maybe only destinations with some kind of service to the public, such as dining or accommodation? Some case studies for budding are Talk:Indigenous cultures of North America and Talk:Pacific War. /Yvwv (talk) 17:01, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

I'd say turn Palaces, which currently redirects here, into a full article. Pashley (talk) 17:29, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

Also Castles partly double what is here. –LPfi (talk) 07:27, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

The marker counter can be worked round by using the counter= parameter in listing, see Roman Empire. It can also be worked round by using a few different listing types - just mixing "see" and "listing" takes the limit to 198. If the article is split, I would prefer doing it by county or region (but Oceania would be a short article with only two listings at the moment). AlasdairW (talk) 10:48, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

Using the type= parameter to assign a colour also works; examples at Ancient Mesopotamia & Indigenous cultures of North America. Pashley (talk) 12:16, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

So should castles (currently a separate article) and palaces (currently a redirect to this article) be separate articles? Or perhaps redirects to sections of this article? Pashley (talk) 16:04, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

I think Castles should remain a separate article. Although castles built / rebuilt in the last 300 years may be grand houses, there are many castles with more basic accommodation and those that have been used more recently used by armies. We should cross refer between the articles, and I don't think any individual properties should appear in both articles (possibly could make an exception for Oceania where there are so few of either). AlasdairW (talk) 22:17, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

And it seems we also have Official residences (I had forgot about it). The sentence "A palace is a grand residence, usually for a head of state" in the lead implies they are included here, but I assume we should not have that redundancy. It seems a large proportion of entries here are residences or former residences of heads of state, although that term and "official" are a bit tricky for older times. –LPfi (talk) 15:01, 9 October 2023 (UTC)