In October 1974, on the day before the polls opened in that year's second general election, an exhibition opened at the V&A museum in South Kensington, London. The exhibition's alarmist intent was clear from its title, printed in a bold red capital type slanted across the black and white imagery of the promotional poster. The effect was akin to a piece of agitprop of the sort that railed against fashionable contemporary causes such as the Vietnam war, nuclear proliferation, or pollution. This exhibition, however, drew attention to an altogether different problem. The Destruction of the Country House brought to the public gaze a list of significant country houses that had been eradicated from the British landscape over the course of the preceding century, many of them surprisingly recently. The exhibition averred that a wholly new phenomenon now beset the country houses of Britain. Mansions were no longer subject solely to the effects of fire and the elements, or to the familiar rhythms of building, rebuilding, and then decline according to the financial fortunes of their owners. Instead, something different was now happening. The market for country houses had, since 1875, completely collapsed.

As John Cornforth completed his investigations into the state of the nation's country houses over the course of 1973 and early 1974, his emergent findings added weight and purpose to the mission pursued by the curators of the Destruction exhibition: John Harris of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), Peter Thornton of the V&A, and, joining a few months after the other two, Marcus Binney of Country Life. Together, they sought to convey the horrors of the losses that they believed the nation had witnessed. The Destruction exhibition opened just a week after John Cornforth's report was published in October 1974, and it by and large continued Cornforth's line of argument. Destruction delivered its message with the showmanship and flair for communications that had come to be associated with the VgA's new director, Roy Strong. Strong had been one of the youngest-ever directors of the National Portrait Gallery when he was appointed to that role in 1967, a time when London was at its most ‘swinging’. With his colourful ties and stylish fedora hats, Strong cut a dandyish figure which was also reflected in the subject matter he chose for his exhibitions.