What is "great house"

n. (context historical English) A large complex with many rooms built for worship by the Anasazi.

A great house is a large house or mansion with luxurious appointments and great retinues of indoor and outdoor staff, especially those of the turn of the 20th century (i.e., the late Victorian or Edwardian era in the United Kingdom and the Gilded Age in the United States). Examples include the English country house and the homes of various "millionaires' row" (or " millionaires' mile") in some U.S. cities such as Newport, Rhode Island. In Ireland, the term big house is usual for the houses of the Anglo-Irish ascendancy. By some reports, the summer homes of the wealthy at Newport averaged four servants per family member. There was often an elaborate hierarchy among staff, domestic workers in particular.

It was considered declassé to refer to one's own townhouses, estates or villas (or those of friends) as mansions and modern etiquette books still advise that the terms house, big house or great house be used instead.

As in the past, today's great houses are limited to heads of state, the very rich, or those who have inherited them; few in the developed world are staffed at the level of past centuries. The International Guild of Butlers estimates that the annual salaries of a 20-25 person household staff total in excess of US$1,000,000.

In countries with supplies of cheap domestic labour, the middle classes are still able to afford household help, but not approaching the numbers involved in the running of a great house.

Great House is a historic home located at St. Augustine, Cecil County, Maryland, United States. It is a large two story brick dwelling constructed in the second quarter of the 18th century. The house retains virtually all its original interior detailing and hardware.

Great House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.

Great House is the third novel by the American writer Nicole Krauss, published on October 12, 2010 by W. W. Norton & Company. Early versions of the first chapter were published in Harper's ("From the Desk of Daniel Varsky", 2007),1 Best American Short Stories 2008, and The New Yorker ("The Young Painters", June 2010). Great House was a finalist for the 2010 National Book Award in Fiction.

When the Thomas Gardner (planter) party of " old planters" came to Cape Ann to establish a fishing colony, they arrived with the necessary provisions to become self-sustaining and to ship seafood product back to England. The area turned out to not allow easy success at the endeavor, but a little-known accomplishment of the small group was to build a house that was the first of its kind in New England. One author wrote: It has been quaintly described by an early writer as "of the model in England first called Tudor, and afterwards the Elizabethan, which was essentially Gothic." It was of two stories with a sharp pitch-roof.

Great house is a term for a large residence and the associated household, especially in the context of the Victorian and Edwardian era.

Great house or Great House may also refer to:

• Great House, name of a former Tudor-era mansion in Bristol, at the site of the later Colston Hall.
• Great House (St. Augustine, Maryland)
• Great House (Cape Ann)
• Great House (novel) a novel by Nicole Krauss.
• "Great Houses", a type of structure found in the Chaco Culture National Historical Park.

in fiction:

• for the term as used in the Dune franchise, see Landsraad.
• five "Great Houses" of the Inner Sphere (BattleTech)
• The nine Major houses in A Song of Ice and Fire

A great house is a large, multi-storied Ancestral Puebloan structure; they were built between 850 and 1150. Archeologists differ as to their purpose, but they might have been residences for large numbers of people, or ceremonial centers that only priests occupied. Archeologist Stephen H. Lekson has proposed that they might have been the palaces of Puebloan royalty, particularly those found at Chaco Canyon.

Whereas the term "great house" typically refers to structures in Chaco Canyon, they are also found in more northerly locations in the San Juan Basin, including the Mesa Verde region, where great house construction flourished during the late 11th and early 12th centuries, and may have begun as early as 800. Mesa Verdeans usually built their great houses on the site of older villages.