Consumption and the country house, c.1730-1800

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This project provides an innovatory analysis of the consumption practices of the elite of 18th-century provincial England. A vast amount has been written about the country house and its owner. Much of it has focused either on consumption as part of wider estate finances (funded through marriage settlements, mortgages and credit, and analysed in terms of income and expenditure) or on luxury goods and the outcomes of consumption - goods as 'art' collections and the country house as the embodiment of social and cultural capital. Little attention has been paid to everyday goods (and their relationship to luxuries) or to the mundane processes of consumption and the systems of supply which met the needs and wants of the elite. Rather than offer another description of the material culture of the country house, this project engages with several wider debates. The first centres on changing cultures of consumption. Eschewing simple notions of conspicuous consumption or of the elite as connoisseurs, the project will establish how they fitted into wider patterns of consumer behaviour usually examined through the activities of the middling sorts. Second, by focusing on the systems of supply and the processes of acquiring goods, it stresses the everyday practicalities of consumption and the relationship between buyers and sellers, exploring the extent to which 'ordinary' tradesmen were seen as arbiters of taste. Third, it links to debates over the value systems which shaped consumption. At one level, the research explores the interaction between national and local identities: specifically the position of London in structuring and articulating consumption. At another it foregrounds neighbourly, familial and inter-generational relationships, and shows how a better understanding of the disposal as well as the accumulation of goods provides important insights into consumer motivations.These debates are explored through a comparative study of two Warwickshire houses and their owners: Stoneleigh Abbey owned by the Leighs and Alscot Park owned from 1749 by the Wests. By the mid 18th century, both families were very wealthy by county standards and enjoyed national connections as well as considerable local influence. They can be seen as typical of two strands of the provincial gentry: the Leighs were an old-established family, present in Warwickshire from the 16th century; John West came to the county having made his money from trade and politics in London - he was thus arriviste and strongly metropolitan. In their similarities and differences, they afford insights into wider practices and attitudes amongst the provincial elite and consumers in general.The significance of this research stretches far beyond a better knowledge of elite consumption. First, it will revise our understanding of the practices and motivations of consumers during a key period of transformation in domestic material culture and consumerism. In particular, it challenges established theorisations of consumption as primarily an expression of social status, stressing instead the heterogeneity of cultural capital, and the everyday, contingent and relational nature of consumer behaviour. Second, by exploring the ways in which people operated as part of a national and local elite, but also as family members and as individuals with their own tastes and value systems, the research questions the relationship between (social) structures and individual agency. Third, it throws new light on the nature and construction of provincial culture, building on a growing appreciation of the resilience of local identity through the 18th century to challenge the overweening importance accorded to national-metropolitan systems of taste. Beyond the realm of academia, the research will provide the wider public with a more nuanced understanding of the workings of the country house, and offer the heritage industry opportunities to present different narratives of the country house as a lived space.