Gentlemen and shopkeepers

The country house is well recognized as a site of elite patronage, an important vehicle of social and political ambition, and a statement of power and taste. Yet we know relatively little about the networks of supply and purchasing patterns of rural elites, or about how their practices related to broader changes in material culture. Drawing on a large sample of bills and receipts of the Leigh family of Stoneleigh in Warwickshire, this article recreates the processes through which the material culture of the family home was constructed. These reveal London as the source for many high-quality goods, although the pattern of supply was not a simple dichotomy of local–everyday and metropolitan–luxury purchases. They also show the large number of shopkeepers patronized as the Leighs spread their purchases through choice, convenience, and expediency. Relating this to wider conceptions of consumption, the Leighs emerge as engaging in layered and sometimes conflicting consumer cultures. They were concerned with fashion as novelty and a marker of rank; but they also valued traditional markers of status. Social distinction was achieved through a continued emphasis on title and lineage as much as fashion or taste—value systems that were unavailable to the middling sorts

Business · Clothing · Consumption (sociology) · Economics · Elite · Metropolitan area · Novelty · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Purchasing power · Quality (philosophy) · Social science · Sociology · Taste · Value (mathematics) · Historical Art and Culture Studies · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · History · Law · Marketing

• Status, gender and life cycle in the consumption practices of the English elite. The case of Mary Leigh, 1736–1806

  Jon Stobart•Social History•2015

  Incluir item

• Middle-ranking household food acquisition

  Catherine V Talbot, Catherine Ann Talbot•History of Retailing and…•2023

  Incluir item

• Quiet Luxury

  Open Access•Maeve O’riordan•Cultural and Social History•2025

  Incluir item

• Uncertain states

  Open Access•Charlie Dannreuther, Lew Perren•Capital & Class•2013

  Incluir item

• Language, history, and class

  P J Corfield•Language, history, and class•1991

  Incluir item

• Abstract of British historical statistics.

  B R Mitchell•Abstract of British historical…•1962

  Incluir item

• The Industrious Revolution

  Open Access•Jan De Vries, Jan de Vriese•Industrious Revolution•2008

  Incluir item

• Consumption and the Making of Respectability, 1600-1800

  Woodruff D Smith, Woodruff Smith•Consumption and the Making of…•2002

  Incluir item

• Distinction

  Pierre Bourdieu, Tony Bennett-undifferentiated•Distinction•1984

  Incluir item

• The Theory Of The Leisure Class

  Thorstein Veblen, Thorstein Bunde Veblen et al.•The Theory Of The Leisure Class•2009

  Incluir item

• Shops and Shopkeeping in Eighteenth-Century England

  Albert J Schmidt, Hoh-Cheung Mui et al.•Eighteenth-Century Studies•1990

  Incluir item

• Polite Consumption

  Open Access•Helen Berry•Transactions of the Royal…•2002

  Incluir item

• Lords and Landlords

  Anthony Sutcliffe, David Cannadine•The Economic History Review•1981

  Incluir item

• Retail growth and consumer changes in a declining urban economy

  Open Access•Bruno Blondé, Ilja Van Damme•The Economic History Review•2010

  Incluir item

• Production and consumption in English households, 1600-1750

  Open Access•Joan Thirsk•The Economic History Review•2005

  Incluir item