Gentlemen and shopkeepers: supplying the country house in eighteenth-century England

"The country house is well recognised as a site of elite patronage of artists, architects and landscape gardeners. As such it was an important vehicle of social and political ambition: a statement of the status and power, as well as the taste and discernment of the aristocracy and landed gentry. In its emphasis on outcomes – that is, great houses as the embodiment of social and cultural capital – this view overlooks the processes of consumption and the systems of supply which met the needs and wants of the elite. It was through these practices – some mundane and everyday, others more exotic and occasional – that the ambitions and tastes of the gentry were brought to fruition. And yet the recent literature on consumption and material culture has made little attempt to establish how the gentry fitted into wider patterns of behaviour in terms of both shopping and consumption practices. This paper forms an empirical and conceptual attempt to fill this gap. It draws on the household accounts of the Ferrers family of Baddesley Clinton in Warwickshire to recreate something of the processes through which the material culture of the family home was created. At a practical level, it seeks to identify and map those supplying the Ferrers with goods and services, and to explore the nature of their relationship with the family. In particular, it explores the inter-generational continuities and shifts of consumption patterns and networks as the estate passed from Edward to his son Thomas. The discussion then broadens to consider the ways in which these changing practices, and the resulting material culture of the Ferrers’ home, were part of wider processes. Here, attention focuses on the move from an old to new material culture; redefined notions of the ‘gentleman’, and the often contradictory motivations to consume. "