“So agreeable and suitable a place”: a late eighteenth-century suburban villa

The suburban villa rose to prominence in the eighteenth century. Burlington, Pope and others built large houses on the outskirts of London as expressions of their wealth and taste, using them to showcase collections, entertain friends or escape from the gaze of the city. Many others acquired rather more modest houses which they used as a convenient and comfortable base for engaging in London life. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these smaller villas have attracted relatively little attention: overshadowed by the grandeur of their rural, and the showiness of their metropolitan, counterparts they contained few artistic treasures or architectural innovations. Yet they were an important element of elite life and material culture. This paper explores one such house in detail: Grove House in Kensington Gore, the property of the Honourable Mary Leigh. Drawing on a large collection of bills, I examine the processes of decorating, furnishing and supplying Grove House around the turn of the nineteenth century. This provides insights into the operation of the suburban villa and the ways in which its material culture and habitation were linked to its country equivalent

The metropolitan geographies of elite shopping: Mary Leigh and Roger Newdigate in Georgian London

The importance of London as a source of elite goods is a commonplace. Work by Berry, Walsh, Vickery and Greig has painted a vivid picture of the mechanisms through which elite women in particular sought out metropolitan suppliers. It has also suggested a variety of motivations for their metropolitan tastes. We also have a good idea of the changing retail geography of London, with west-end shops becoming increasingly prominent through the eighteenth century. Less clear are the ways in which these two were linked through the spatial practices of consumers: where, precisely, did elites shop? How was this linked to their place of residence, experience of London or longevity in the city? And what difference did gender make? This paper explores these questions by mapping the metropolitan shopping habits of two elite families with estates in rural Warwickshire and houses in London: the Leighs of Stoneleigh Abbey and Newdigates of Arbury Hall. I argue that London retailers were both local and metropolitan – geographies of elite shopping being linked to the London residence and to key retail locations – and that men and women had different shopping geographies in part because of their different engagements in and with London

Who were the urban gentry? Social elites in an English provincial town, c.1680-1760

This paper explores the identity and social worlds of the ‘urban gentry’ of Chester as they developed from the late seventeenth to the mid eighteenth century. In place of the political and cultural definitions which characterise analyses of this group, it takes the self-defined ‘occupational ’ titles of probate records as a starting point for an investigation into the background and activities of those styling themselves ‘gentleman’. Central to their identity were networks of friendship and trust. These reveal the urban gentry to have been closely tied with both the urban middling sorts and the rural gentry: a position which at once reflected and underpinned their particular situation within eighteenth-century societ

The making of domestic medicine: gender, self-help and therapeutic determination in household healthcare in South-West England in the late seventeenth century

This thesis explores household healthcare in the later seventeenth century, particularly the extent of household production of medicines based on medicinal receipts. Medicinal receipts were widely collected in the early modem period although the extent to which these recipes were in ongoing use has not been well-established. The aims of this research are to consider the health concerns and activities of lay women and men, to identify resources available for self-help healthcare, and to establish factors affecting selection and use of medicinal receipts. Accounts are analysed alongside family letters and receipt collections, from selected households in South West England, to identify medicinal supplies and medical services provided by apothecaries, physicians, surgeons and other individuals. Households differ in terms of ingredients purchased, preparations preferred, suppliers, therapeutic strategies used, and the extent of use of medical practitioners. Recorded ingredient purchases match few receipts although there is evidence of some favourite preparations being made. Other resources are considered, including gifts of advice and remedies, and plant ingredients from gardens and the wild. I argue that use of these other resources depended on factors such as knowledge, including plant identification skills, and material considerations, including labour availability. Purchased medicines appeared to become increasingly significant in self-help whilst opportunities for gift medicine may have been reduced. I contrast the gentlewoman healer and the patient consumer in their assessment of medicinal receipts, and their use of medicines with children. Both demonstrated strategies for maintaining therapeutic determination and influencing the approach of medical practitioners in relation to their own complaints. This study shows that medicinal receipt collections did not fully reflect the extent of lay healthcare activities and differences between lay household healthcare practitioners. It contributes to our understanding of the gendered shaping of domestic medicine, and the relationship of household healthcare to medical authority and the developing commercial and professional medical market in the eighteenth century