Where the Malfoys Live

[Kirstin Innes <kirst_inn@yahoo.co.uk>]

No: HPFGUIDX 50584

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "annemehr <annemehr at y...>" 
<annemehr at y...> wrote: 

>>(if I make any mistakes about RL fact, any Brits reading this 
should correct me!)  

Hello! A "Brit" of sorts (technically a Scot, but always happy to 
oblige)here.A couple of points: The difference between a manor 
and a mansion is that "mansion" refers just to the house itself, 
whereas the term "manor", I think, refers also to the family estate 
and rank - ie a mansion would be "formerly a manor" if the titled 
family who once owned it were no longer in residence. However, many 
older houses in England (not Scotland, but then the term is 
particular to the fussy wee country down south)still retain the 
title "___ Manor" - if the house has already been named, there seems 
little point in changing it, I suppose.

In the earlier post on this topic (sorry. I haven't worked out how 
to quote from more than one post yet. I will get there soon.) Steve 
spoke about mansion houses in Beverly Hills and Minnappolis (was 
it?) having begun isolated but eventually becoming surrounded by 
city. I'm not claiming to be an expert on London, magical or 
otherwise - I think that the way that city has spread rather defies 
logic - but there is nowhere else in Britain where that could 
happen. Not sure what sort of pride the MoM takes in their national 
heritage, but all buildings of the sort you describe in Muggle 
Britain are around 200-500 years old and protected by a heritage 
trust of some sort or another. When these buildings become listed, 
it becomes impossible for developers to build anything round about 
that would spoil the scenic aspect. 
London, as I said, is a law unto itself, but I feel fairly certain 
that similar regulations would apply.

 Manor houses are usually, like the Riddle house (which I don't 
think quite qualifies under this description), set at some distance 
from a small village whose occupants were, until recently, the 
tenants of the landed family. 
They are usually too far out for the city to hold any claim to them. 
There are some very big houses in Central London, but none of these 
could be called "manors" or even "mansions", and the villages that 
expanding Greater London swallowed up tended to be hamlets and 
boroughs, independant of the manor house tenancy system.

I feel fairly certain that this is the system that JKR has in mind 
when she refers to the Malfoy's "manor". Part of the Malfoy pride 
lies in the fact that they are an old wizarding family, which could  
be seen to be equivilant to a titled Muggle family (although these 
have very little sway in contemporary Britain), and a titled Muggle 
family would almost certainly own (or have once owned) land. 
Obviously, Hogsmeade is the only all-wizard settlement in Britain, 
and as the Malfoys hate Muggles there would be little chance of them 
living *too* near a village. However, I really think that this, 
rather than a town-house, is the sort of thing JKR means. 

One final piece of argument - if the Malfoys lived in London, why 
would Lucius be combining two trips into one - getting rid of 
artefacts and buying Draco's school supplies on the same day? If he 
lived nearer he could surely have gone in to Knockturn Alley on a 
day when he was slightly less likely to meet all of Draco's fellow 
Hogwarts students in Magical London, and visited Mr Borgin in 
privacy.

Sorry for the pedantry.
Kirstin