Agricultural History Review, Volume 65 Part 1 (2017), p. 156

Stobart and Rothery’s comprehensive book aims to re-orientate the study of the country house. It goes beyond useful but increasingly limited art historical and architectural analyses to discover the meaning of the house through the processes and relationships behind the highly visible objects on display, with a move to reveal more about social and cultural change. Through this focus on consumption, Stobart and Rothery have used the archives of three families in order to make connections between various perspectives and to place the country house in a broader context, thus paving the way for new interpretations of the splendour of the British country house. The book is a product of a two-and-a-half-year AHRC-funded project entitled ‘Consumption and the Country House c.1730-1800’, awarded 2010, which enabled Stobart and Rothery to look at the archives of the Leigh family of Stoneleigh Abbey (Warwickshire), the Newdigates of Arbury Hall (Warwickshire) and the Drydens of Canons Ashby (Northamptonshire).

The book is structured around five themes, roughly corresponding to the chapters but also overlapping to show the fluid nature of the study of material culture in the country house. The first considers the country house as a site of both conspicuous and everyday consumption, reflecting on its complexity and composition as a space. Secondly, corresponding to key concerns raised in their historiographical survey, Stobart and Rothery address the changing nature of eighteenth-century domestic material culture. The third theme analyses the relationship between consumption and identity, with a chapter dedicated to each masculinity and femininity. This works with Amanda Vickery’s analysis in her 2009 book, Behind closed doors, and confidently combines current thinking on gender and consumption with work on gender and the country house. The fourth looks at the practicalities of supply and the conditional nature of consumption, which flows nicely into the fifth and final theme, that of the spatiality of consumption, within and extending beyond the country house.

The cases of the three different families are very well woven together throughout the book, representing different facets of what Stobart and Rothery aim to achieve in widening the story and context of the country house in terms of consumption. This works particularly well in Chapter 5, where four different women – Mary Leigh as heiress and custodian, Sophia and Hester Newdigate as wives, and Elizabeth Dryden as both widow and mother – are utilized to show how gender interacts with different identities and moments in the life cycle to determine consumption habits amongst women. Here Stobart and Rothery conclude that conventional female roles did not automatically mean a lack of agency on women’s part or a lack of awareness of the opportunities for using gender strategically. Both this chapter and the preceding one on masculinity move beyond Vickery’s analysis of the sexual division of consumer responsibilities between spouses to examine how different circumstances shaped the ways elite men and women experienced and harnessed consumerism across a longer period of time.

Construction of identity is key in country house literature, with the traditional view being of a house carefully and self-consciously constructed according to taste. Stobart and Rothery question this throughout the book, beginning in the first chapter with the observation that conspicuous consumption was rarely conspicuous just for the sake of it. Chapter 2 reveals how taste was tempered by a long list of other influences, such as conservatism, rank and lineage, as well as the influence of relationships with family and friends, as discussed in Chapter 6. Chapter 3 reminds us of the importance of the routines of everyday life in constructing the space of the country house, remarking that everyday practices and the lived spaces underpinned the social and spatial consumption within the country house. They reinforced the practices more commonly seen as conspicuous consumption. This link is very important in fulfilling Stobart and Rothery’s aim to invite a fuller understanding of the country house as a process, contrasting with previous analyses, which tend to focus on landmark pieces of material culture, rather than the implications of both the everyday and the special within country houses. As the British country house is perceived and presented as a place of luxury, and – as commented in Chapter 1 – the elite who resided in these spaces were distinguished by their ability to spend lavishly on the kind of goods that would indicate their status, we can easily forget this important aspect of consumption. Yet as Stobart and Rothery argue here, the country house represents a nexus of flows of goods, people and ideas, and all forms of consumption are integral to the building of spaces, social relationships and identities.

Overall, Consumption and the country house demonstrates how the country house during the eighteenth century was a product of modern forces and an ever-changing set of spaces. In successfully weaving together the stories of their three chosen country house families and their consumption, and insisting on seeing the material culture of the country house as a process rather than an end product, Stobart and Rothery offer a forward-thinking argument that opens up the country house for further study on each of the themes addressed in the book.