Cleveland is a stately home in Somersetshire and the county seat of hopeful M.P. Mr. Thomas Palmer, Esq. He lives there with his wife, Charlotte Palmer, and, by the end of the novel, their infant son.
We know from events in the novel that Cleveland is fairly close to Bristol, between 10 and 30 miles from Combe Magna, and reasonably close to Barton, Devonshire.
Architecture and Decor
Cleveland is described as “a spacious, modern-built house.” We know there is a library but have few other details.
Park, Gardens and Land
The narrator tells us that Cleveland is “situated on a sloping lawn. It had no park, but the pleasure-grounds were tolerably extensive; and like every other place of the same degree of importance, it had its open shrubbery, and closer wood walk, a road of smooth gravel winding round a plantation, led to the front, the lawn was dotted over with timber, the house itself was under the guardianship of the fir, the mountain-ash, and the acacia, and a thick screen of them altogether, interspersed with tall Lombardy poplars, shut out the offices.”
We also know there is a Grecian temple which overlooks a big vista to the southeast. Marianne takes several walks around the grounds during her stay there and especially enjoys the “most distant parts of them, where there was something more of wildness than in the rest, where the trees were the oldest, and the grass was the longest and wettest.”
History and Context
Because the house is described as “modern” in design but Marianne is not particularly in raptures about it, we can guess that it is likely English Palladian and not fully Gothic revival.
