One hears the word Manor House quite frequently. June Deveraux is restoring a Manor House in England. Jane Seymour owns a Manor House near Bath. And so on...

Typically, the Manor House is a building that is old; one that is rooted in the history of its village or hamlet; a house that is the embodiment in brick and stone of the squirearchy; a structure which reinforces an image of England.

It is, or ought to be, a house that has been inhabited by one family through the centuries. A family that would have taken part in the major events of British history: a family that had, perhaps, fought the Armada, a family whose sons might have gone to India with Clive and later would have formed the backbone of the Indian Civil Service.

A family whose ancestors' bones lie in the small churchyard that abuts the manor house garden, while in the church, on a highly polished brass plaque, are engraved the names of the men of the family who fell as gallant young officers in the Boer War, the Great War and the Second World War.

The Manor House would once have been home to a family that, over the years, dispatched its duties in the village with quiet dignity. In feudal times these duties would have been administrative and legal, involving a manorial court that resolved disputes between tenants and the like.

The Manor family's role dwindled over the passing years so that by now, the family (by now probably a different family) is responsible for little more than attending village f?tes and providing tea, biscuits and welcoming faces for visiting historical societies.

With the Manor House, the myth of an integrated rural Britain is at its most potent. At its best the house will also exemplify the more desirable qualities of local architecture; in Sussex this may be seen in a Horsham slate roof, in Barrow, a township in Suffolk- the use of flint in the walls; in Yorkshire it may be a fancy round window in the porch. Manor houses also tend to come with some land, enough to make them pleasant to inhabit, but not so much as to make them a burden. In terms of the property market, the Manor House falls somewhere between the Old Vicarage or Old Rectory and the small country estate.

The title, Lord of the Manor, does not necessarily come with a Manor House. The title is something separate, usually attached to only unique properties and freeholds. In England, unlike the continent, landed status was lost if the family lost their land.

The arcane privileges conferred by such titles are interesting. Rights which have survived over the centuries, for example, may be something like supplying the communion wafers for the sovereign at his or her coronation or holding the bowl or spittoon for the sovereign when he or she travels abroad by sea in case he or she is seasick.

Some titles also bring with them more practical rights such as the right to hold a market or fair, ownership of foreshore, fisheries and even mineral rights. Kathryn Lady Barrow's title, for instance, was conveyed these rights in the 13th century!