Townhouse (Great Britain)

Townhouse in British usage properly refers to the town or city residence of a member of the nobility or gentry, as opposed to their country seat, generally known as a country house or, colloquially, for the larger ones, stately home. The grandest of the London townhouses were stand-alone buildings, but many were terraced buildings. In modern usage for marketing purposes, British property developers and estate agents often call new city terraced houses, townhouses, following the North American usage of the term, to aggrandise modest dwellings and to avoid the negative connotation of cheap terraced housing built in the Victorian era to accommodate workers. The aristocratic pedigree of terraced housing, for example as survives in St James's Square in Westminster, is widely forgotten. The term is comparable to the Hôtel particulier which housed the French nobleman in Paris.