Agricultural History Review, Volume 64 Part 2 (2016), p. 267

The country house is an excellent collection of essays, which grew out of a 2012 conference held at the University of Northampton and co-organized with English Heritage. Each of the chapters has something original to contribute to recent discussions about material culture and consumption in the period since 1700. In particular, several essays take novel approaches to illuminate the transnational movement of goods and intellectual and aesthetic ideas, and trace the national and local networks of consumption in which the country house was involved.

The international approach taken by several of the contributors offers useful comparisons as to the motivations for building country houses in different European contexts. Yme Kuiper and Johanna Ilmakunnas look at country house building in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic and eighteenth-century Sweden respectively, and show that the motivations behind building country houses were varied and complex. Along with Shelley Garland’s essay on Earl de Grey’s choice of a French style of architecture at Wrest Park, and Victor Hugo López Borges’s chapter exploring the Anglo-Irish influences on the building of the Palacio de Castrelos in Spain, these essays demonstrate the transnational movement of design and intellectual ideas which influenced architecture and design across Europe.

Another group of essays study the proliferation and popularity of exotic goods in the eighteenth century. Kate Smith explores the complex meanings attached to global and imperial objects. Smith argues that these were not just objects of high fashion but were valued for the sentimental and personal memories attached to them through gift giving and dynastic inheritance. Helen Clifford looks at where different imperial objects were placed within the houses of Sir Lawrence Dundas, an eighteenth-century businessman who invested heavily in the East India Company. Clifford argues that there were a myriad of meanings attached to different properties held in one family, meanings that are revealed through the moving and placing of items in certain properties. Through this study of objects and place, Clifford supports the overarching argument of this collection that a country house needs to be understood in the context of its wider geographical, social and economic networks.

Another strength of this collection is furnished by the essays that look beyond the walls of the house to the wider estate and country. Jane Whittle’s superb chapter on the consumption habits of the Le Stranges of Hunstanton in the seventeenth century is an excellent example of the fruitfulness of looking beyond inventories in order to study the processes of consumption in a country house. By using household accounts, Whittle traces the supply of mundane and ephemeral items that do not appear in inventories. In doing so she finds that the seventeenth-century country house had strong economic links with both local rural society and large urban areas. Jon Stobart and Mark Rothery’s essay on the geographies of supplying Stoneleigh Abbey and Arbury Hall in the eighteenth century supports this understanding of the country house as part of a wider economic and social network. By tracing the suppliers of these neighbouring estates, Stobart and Rothery argue that personal preferences and family loyalties were often the deciding factor in the consumption habits of the elite. In considering the life cycles and seasonal mobility of aristocratic families, they argue that the ‘local’ was a ‘fluid concept’ to eighteenth-century families. This conclusion is supported by the contribution of Annie Gray in an essay on the supplying of food to the Victorian country house. Gray considers the entire process of food consumption from acquisition to preparation to disposal, bringing together the house and its surrounding estate. The journey of foodstuffs demonstrates that country houses were linked to other properties in the family network and that ‘local’ was a variable concept. A section on interpretation and representation poses challenging questions about the future and memory of the country house. Karen Fielder’s wonderful essay on the lost house of Coleshill challenges the concept of treating the country house as separate from the wider estate, arguing that the landscape of the Coleshill estate can only be understood through an awareness of the house that once stood there.

As a whole, the contributors draw a coherent and persuasive argument that we cannot understand the complex and shifting meanings and uses of a country house without considering the wider geographical, economic and social contexts in which they are situated. By focusing upon consumption and the country house, this collection shows that it is possible to re-place the country house within transnational, national, local and personal networks and see it as a ‘fluid’ rather than a fixed and isolated entity. This thought-provoking collection of essays is therefore essential reading for historians, archaeologists, geographers and others concerned with the development of the country house and its contribution to rural and urban economies, as well as for all those interested in wider histories of consumption across the last three centuries.