We all have our own idea of Pemberley, the quintessential Jane Austen estate. On film, it’s been played by gorgeous Lyme Park, in Cheshire (15-acre garden, 1,400-acre deer park), and even more fabulous Chatsworth, in Derbyshire (126 rooms, 105-acre garden), although it’s likely that Mr. Darcy’s £10,000 a year would not have sufficed to maintain such palatial properties.
Still, even if Darcy contented himself with a more modest stately home, it seems likely he never had to make do with the 460 square feet of the Pemberley, a portable house-on-wheels recently built for a family of five by Colorado-based Rocky Mountain Tiny Houses.*
Tiny Houses are intended to be more affordable and environmentally sustainable than the sprawling McMansions of suburbia, but this particular model is hardly austere: The kitchen features cherry cabinets and granite countertops, the electronic hookup allows for a giant TV, and the appliances are high-end.
Personally, I can’t imagine raising small children in a space this, um, tiny -- not to mention that our books alone would take up all the available surfaces. But check out those beautiful poplar-wood walls! It’s enough to make a girl change her mind about a marriage proposal.
* Thanks to AustenBlog’s Maggie Sullivan for bringing this item to my attention via Twitter.
2 comments
Sep 11 2017 03:15PM by Maggie Sullivan
It is beautiful and the name made me laugh, but I can't help thinking the "gooseneck" tiny homes, of which this is an example, defeat the purpose of tiny homes. That being said, the name is absolutely on point.
Sep 11 2017 03:41PM by Deborah Yaffe
I don't really know enough about the philosophy of tiny homes to parse these distinctions! I consider our house reasonably modest, at least by suburban standards -- i.e., our kids complained that we couldn't fit a big-screen TV and a ping-pong table in the finished basement , let alone the pool table that some of their friends had -- but I don't think I could live with a family in one of these really tiny homes. I'd get claustrophobic at the lack of privacy.