Ashton Court is a mansion house and estate to the west of Bristol in England. Although the estate lies mainly in North Somerset, it is owned by the City of Bristol. The mansion and stables are a Grade I listed building.[1] Other structures on the estate are also listed.
Ashton Court has been the site of a manor house since the 11th century, and has been developed by a series of owners since then. From the 16th to 20th centuries it was owned by the Smyth family with each generation changing the house. Designs by Humphry Repton were used for the landscaping in the early 19th century. It was used as a military hospital in the First World War. In 1936 it was used as the venue for the Royal Show and, during the Second World War as an army transit camp. In 1946 the last of the Smyth family died and the house fell into disrepair before its purchase in 1959 by Bristol City Council.
The estate developed from the original deer park and is Grade II* listed on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens of special historic interest in England. It is the venue for a variety of leisure activities, including the now-defunct Ashton Court Festival, Bristol International Kite Festival and the Bristol International Balloon Fiesta. It is home to charity The Forest of Avon Trust.
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Upper Class:
The upper class in modern societies is the social class composed of the wealthiest members of society, who also wield the greatest political power.[1] According to this view, the upper class is generally distinguished by immense wealth which is passed on from generation to generation.[2][unreliable source?] Prior to the 20th century, the nomenclature aristocracy was widely used.[3]

Because the upper classes of a society may no longer rule the society in which they are living, they are often referred to as the old upper class....
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Landed Gentry:
Landed gentry or gentry is a largely historical British social class consisting in theory of landowners who could live entirely from rental income, or at least had a country estate. It was distinct from, and socially "below", the aristocracy or peerage, although in fact some of the landed gentry were wealthier than some peers, and many gentry were related to peers. They often worked as administrators of their own lands, while others became public, political and armed forces figures. The decline of this privileged class largely stemmed from the 1870s agricultural depression.

The designation "landed gentry" originally referred exclusively to members of the upper class who were landlords and also commoners in the British sense, that is, they did not hold peerages, but usage became more fluid over time. Similar or analogous social systems of landed gentry also sprang up in countries that maintained a colonial system; the term is employed in many British colonies such as the Colony of Virginia and some parts of India. By the late 19th century, the term was also applied to peers such as the Duke of Westminster who lived on landed estates. The book series Burke's Landed Gentry recorded the members of this class. Successful burghers often used their accumulated wealth to buy country estates, with the aim of establishing themselves as landed gentry....[ Ссылка ]

United States:
The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S.) or America (/əˈmɛrɪkə/), is a federal republic[16][17] composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions.[fn 6] Forty-eight states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U.S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The extremely diverse geography, climate and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.[19]
At 3.8 million square miles (9.8 million km2)[20] and with over 324 million people, the United States is the world's third- or fourth-largest country by total area,[fn 7] and the third-most populous. The capital is Washington, D.C., and the largest city is New York City; twelve other major metropolitan areas—each with at least 4.5 million inhabitants—are Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Miami, Atlanta, Boston, San Francisco, Phoenix, and Riverside.
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