The House at Old Vine

Name: The House at Old Vine
Rating: 4.24 (1008 reviews)

by Norah Lofts Book 2 in the The House Trilogy series.

First published 1961

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4.2(1,008)

Beginning in 1496, the second House novel follows six generations of the Reed descendants and the people who inherit, serve, marry into or struggle against the household founded by Martin Reed. The early Tudor monarchy, religious change and the expanding horizons of the sixteenth century alter the assumptions under which the family first prospered, while each generation adds its own ambitions, quarrels and secrets to the Old Vine.
The story carries the house through the Henrician Reformation, Elizabethan England, the English Civil War and the Restoration, ending around 1680. Lofts uses abrupt generational shifts deliberately: individuals disappear, property changes hands and family stories harden into legend, yet the house preserves traces of choices made decades earlier. The novel turns political and religious upheaval into a sequence of domestic consequences rather than a chronicle of rulers.

Historical Periods

Reign of Henry VII1485–1509 CE Henrician Reformation1530–1547 CE Elizabethan Age1558–1603 CE Restoration1660–1685 CE First English Civil War1642–1646 CE