I was browsing around looking to see what kinds of things went into manor house cellars yesterday in order to finish off the maps for Lisport Manor and ran across The Gentleman’s House, an 1865 book by architect Robert Kerr. It appears to be a guide, with floorplans, for a variety of eleventh through nineteenth century noble homes! It’s a 603-page monstrosity including plates of real floor plans such as Bridgewater House (1849, plate 19) and tables of accommodation and cost (see page 396, or page 471 in the PDF). For a really nice adventure map, look at plate 20 (PDF page 130) for the 1863 map of “West Shandon, Dumbartonshire”.

Looks like a great source for game masters in need of realistic maps, or who want to know what goes into building one of these things that player characters destroy with a single fireball. You can download the PDF from Google Books. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell the text version is not downloadable, which makes it difficult to search the document off-line. It’s still a pretty cool resource.