'Pots and pans history': The material culture of the kitchen in early modern England

Journal of Design History

Volumn 11, Issue 3, 1998, Pages 201-216

  Pennell, Sara ^a  

^a VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Domestic space; Domestic utensils; Historiography; Household management; Kitchen design; Material culture studies

Indexed keywords

EID: 34249186071     PISSN: 09524649     EISSN: 17417279     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/jdh/11.3.201     Document Type: Review

References (76)

1. Eliza Smith, The Compleat Housewife, or Accomplished Gentlewoman's Companion, 15th edn. , London, 1750, p. 32.
2. London Guildhall Library (hereafter LGL), MS 9174/18, metal pots appraised in the inventory of Richard Eldridge, St Sepulchre without Newgate parish, London, dated 4 February 1666/7.
3. Public Record Office, London ASSI 45/8/2/132, Northern Circuit Assize examination of Anne Martin, allegedly poisoned by Lidya Willson, servant to Agnes Watson of Selby (Yorks. ), dated 6 September 1667.
4. The kitchen was not sited in the space designated as such in the museum guide, but probably on the same basement level, beneath the adjacent building; Number 1, Royal Crescent Bath: An Illustrated Guide and Souvenir (Bath, n. d. ): Brigitte Mitchell, Board of Trustees, pers. comm. , August 1996.
5. This word has yet to find its way into the OED.
6. This term is used as a shorthand reference to denote the space in which a non-élite household's main food preparation and consumption frequently took place; it was, however, by no means the sole term used for this space in early modern England.
7. For a valuable critical overview of this historiography, see Paul Glennie, 'Consumption within historical studies', in Daniel Miller (ed. ), Acknowledging Consumption: A Review of New Studies, Routledge, 1995, pp. 164-203.
8. The phrase is that of a Lancashire parson, Thomas Brockbank in R. Trappes-Lomax (ed. ), The Diary and Letter Book of the Reverend Thomas Brockbank 1671-1709, Chetham Society, vol. 89, 1930, p. 256.
9. Anne E. Yentsch, 'The symbolic divisions of pottery: sex-related attributes of English and Anglo-American household pots', in Randall H. McGuire & Robert Paynter (eds. ), The Archaeology of Inequality, Blackwell, 1991, pp. 192-230, at p. 212;
10. Lorna Weatherill, Consumer Behaviour and Material Culture in Britain 1660-1760, Routledge, 1988, pp. 150-1.
11. Matthew Johnson, An Archaeology of Capitalism, Blackwell, 1996, pp. 49-50.
12. William Rollinson, Life and Tradition in the Lake District, Dalesman, 1981, p. 44.
13. See, for example, London Guildhall Library (hereafter LGL), MS 3149/1, St Sepulchre without Newgate Vestry Minutes, March 1653-1661, pp. 214, 220, 224, 235; Oxfordshire Archives, MS D. D. Par. Dorchester b. 10, Dorchester upon Thames (Oxon. ) Overseers of the Poor accounts, 1680-1744, fols. 41r, 68r, 96v.
14. Yentsch, 'Symbolic divisions', passim;
15. Johnson, Archaeology of Capitalism, p. 176.
16. See Sara Pennell, 'The material culture of food in early modern England, circa 1650-1750', unpublished D. Phil. , Oxford, 1997, Ch. 5.
17. The same observation is made for structures in pre-1666 City and suburbs, in Roger Schofield (ed. ), London: Surveys of Ralph Treswell, London Topographical Society Publication 135, London Topographical Society, 1987, pp. 85-7.
18. Bill Hillier & Julienne Hanson, The Social Logic of Space, Cambridge University Press, 1988, pp. 143-97, especially pp. 143-7.
19. These are the plans of spatial accessibility generated through an analysis of the relative 'depth' or 'shallowness' of room spaces within a building plan. They are 'justified' in relation to exterior space; that is, each space is depicted in its access relationship to other spaces, but the primary relationship is that of all interior spaces to exterior space: for more details, see Hillier & Hanson, op. cit. , pp. 149, 154-5.
20. Hillier & Hanson make a similar point in analysing a typical modern houseplan and its variants, although their observations about 'front parlours' in modern housing are perhaps less applicable to comparable spaces in the early modern household. It should also be noted that few representations of non-élite early modern house plans include upper storeys, so that their inclusion in any access analysis plan is not possible; see Hillier & Hansom, op. cit. , pp. 155, 158-9.
21. Robert B. St George, '"Set thine house in order": the domestication of the yeomanry in seventeenth century New England', in J. F. Fairbanks & R. Trent (eds. ), New England Begins: The Seventeenth Century, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 1982, pp. 159-88.
22. Ursula Priestley & Penelope J. Corfield, 'Rooms and room use in Norwich housing, 1580-1730', Post-Medieval Archaeology, vol. 16, 1982, pp. 93-124.
23. See also Frank E. Brown, 'Continuity and change in the urban house: developments in domestic space organisation in seventeenth century London', Comparative Studies in History and Society, vol. 28, 1986, pp. 558-90.
24. Maurice Barley, 'A glossary for the names of rooms in houses in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries', in I. L. Foster & L. Alcock (eds. ), Culture and Environment: Essays in Honour of Sir Cyril Fox, London, 1963, passim;
25. and Priestley & Corfield, op cit. , pp. 105-10.
26. Brown, op. cit. , pp. 576, 584-5.
27. Cumbria Record Office, Kendal branch (hereafter CROK), HK660 (R), John Robinson inventory, dated 18 February 1700/1.
28. LGL, MS 9174/28, William Peplo inventory, dated 14 November 1702; MS 9174/28, Thomas Smith inventory, dated 12 June 1702.
29. LGL, MS 9174/42, Thomas Wetherall inventory, dated 24 October 1723. Interestingly these are no longer present in the inventory of Wetherall's widow, Anne, which was taken eighteen months after his in April 1725; MS 9174/44, Anne Wetherall inventory, dated 26 April 1725. For birds in non-metropolitan inventories, see Norfolk Record Office, Norwich (hereafter NRO), ANW 23/1/17[iii]/ fol. 6, Robert Rippin inventory, dated 10 April 1727.
30. For more detailed discussion of the particular character of consumption in the north-west, see Pennell, op. cit. , Ch. 4; data from this study suggest nearly 40% of decedents from a sample of Westmorland inventories between 1720 and 1740 died in possession of a kitchen clock, compared to only 26% of decedents from the two metropolitan parishes already noted.
31. See also J. D. Marshall, 'Agrarian wealth and social structure in pre-industrial Cumbria', Economic History Review, vol. 33, no. 4, 1980, pp. 514, 520. ;
32. and idem, Old Lakeland: Some Cumbrian Social History, David & Charles, 1971, p. 45.
33. Pennell, op. cit. , Chs. 3 and 4;
34. cf. Moira Donald, '"The greatest necessity for every rank of men": gender, clocks and watches', unpublished paper given at 'Gender and Material Culture: from Pre-History to the Present' Conference, University of Exeter, July 1994, u. p.
35. Skipper's appraisers scrupulously noted down the colours and media of items in other rooms of the house, so that we know he also owned a 'green bed' and a 'black-framed looking glass' in the 'green chamber', while in the garret there was a 'blue canopy bed' and a 'three leaf painted screen': NRO, CN81b/12, William Skipper inventory, dated 21 September 1742. Abbott Lowell Cummings makes a similar point about the decorative detailing in colonial New England kitchens and service rooms: Abbott Lowell Cummings, The Framed Houses of Massachusetts Bay 1625-1725, Harvard University Press, 1979. pp. 195-7.
36. NRO, C/S3/Box 55a, 36 Car. II, roll 3, Norfolk Quarter Sessions, information of Mary Gillam et al.
37. David G. Vaisey (ed. ), The Diary of Thomas Turner, 1754-1765, Oxford University Press, 1984, p. 15.
38. Hillier & Hanson, op. cit. , p. 159.
39. Craig Muldrew, 'Interpreting the market: the ethics of credit and community relations in early modern England', Social History, vol. 18, no. 2, 1993, pp. 169, 179, 181-2.
40. See, for example, Robert Hughes, Heaven and Hell in Western Art, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1968, pp. 209-11;
41. Piero Camporesi, The Fear of Hell, trans. Lucinda Byatt, Polity Press, 1990, passim;
42. Philip Almond, Heaven and Hell in Enlightenment England, Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. 81-94.
43. Frances E. Dolan, Dangerous Familiars: Representatives of Domestic Crime in England, 1550-1700, Cornell University Press, 1994, pp. 24, 30-2.
44. These shifts are examined in greater detail in Pennell, op. cit. , Ch. 4.
45. Weatherill, op. cit. , p. 179;
46. for more examples of dredgers, incorrectly labelled as 'muffineers' (a nineteenth-century term), see Ruper Gentle & Rachael Feild, English Domestic Metalwork, 1640-1820, rev. Belinda Gentle, Antique Collectors' Club, 1994, p. 243.
47. William Salmon, The Family Dictionary or Household Companion, by J. H. , London, 1695, u. p.
48. See also 'The best dredging' in Gervase Markham, The English Housewife, ed. Michael R. Best, McGill University Press, 1994, p. 84;
49. Hannah Woolley, The Queen-Like Closet, or Rich Cabinet Stored with all Manner of Rare Receipts for Preserving, Candying and Cookery, fifth edn. , London, 1684, p. 176;
50. Edward Kidder, Edward Kidder's Receipts in Pastry and Cookery, for the Use of his Scholars, London, c. 1720, recipe 11 (fol. 8).
51. For a more detailed examination of tinplate innovations and production in the period, see W. E. Minchinton, The British Tinplate Industry: A History, Oxford University Press, 1957;
52. and F. W. Gibbs, 'The rise of the tinplate industry', parts I and II, Annals of Science, vol. 6, 1950, pp. 390-403, and vol. 7, 1951, pp. 25-43.
53. Quoted in Minchinton, op. cit. , p. 15.
54. Cf. Neil McKendrick, 'Josiah Wedgwood and the commercialisation of the Potteries', in Neil McKendrick, John Brewer & J. H. Plumb (eds. ), The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialisation of Eighteenth Century England, Hutchinson, 1983, pp. 100-45;
55. and Maxine Berg, 'Commerce and creativity in eighteenth century Birmingham', in Maxine Berg (ed. ), Markets and Manufacture in Early Industrial Europe, Routledge, 1991, pp. 173-204.
56. Marina Bianchi, 'The collector', unpublished paper given at 'Consumption and Culture in Europe 1650-1850' Conference, University of Warwick, 16 February 1996.
57. Morris Palmer Tilley, A Dictionary of the Proverbs in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Ann Arbor, MI, 1950, K111;
58. cf. Bourdieu's conception of the 'taste for necessity' as an 'amor fati': Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard Nice, Harvard University Press, 1984, pp. 177-8.
59. LGL, MS 9174/31, William Hall inventory, dated 16 January 1706/7.
60. Martha C. Howell, 'Fixing movables: gifts by testament in late medieval Douai', Past and Present, no. 150, 1996, pp. 34-5, 39-40.
61. Bourdieu, op. cit. , pp. 125, 224.
62. Berkshire Record Office, D/A1/49/160, Sarah Boult will, dated 11 September 1732.
63. This testamentary detail also usefully supplements what is recorded in Boult's inventory which is lodged with the will (same MS reference).
64. Amanda Vickery, 'Women and the world of goods: a Lancashire consumer and her possessions, 1751-81', in John Brewer & Roy Porter (eds. ), Consumption and the World of Goods, Routledge, 1993, pp. 283, 292-3;
65. Amy Louise Erickson, Women and Property in Early Modern England, Routledge, 1993, pp. 26, 144-5, 222.
66. NRO, N. C. R. Case 12, shelf b (1), Norwich Sessions informations and examinations, information of James Cobb, dated 10 March 1697/8.
67. Cf. Yentsch, op. cit. , pp. 206, 212.
68. W. David Kingery, 'Technological systems and some implications with regard to continuity and change', in Steven Lubar & W. David Kingery (eds. ), History from Things: Essays on Material Culture, Smithsonian Institute, 1993, pp. 218-19;
69. cf. Christine E. Bose, Philip L. Bereano & Mary Malloy, 'Household technology and the social construction of house-work', Technology and Culture, vol. 25, 1984, pp. 54-5, 81;
70. Erik Arnould & Wendy Faulkner, 'Smothered by invention: the masculinity of technology', in Wendy Faulkner & Erik Arnould (eds. ), Smothered by Invention: Technology in Women's Lives, London, 1985, p. 22.
71. Penned, op. cit. , Chs. 2 and 3.
72. Martin Ingram, Church Courts, Sex and Marriage in England 1570-1640, Cambridge University Press, 1987, p. 163;
73. R. Cotgrove, A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues (London, 1611)
74. quoted in Thompson, 'Rough music', in E. P. Thompson, Customs in Common, Penguin, 1991, pp. 467, 469, 471-2, 475 and passim.
75. John Walter: 'The social economy of dearth in early modern England', in John Walter & Roger Schofield (eds. ), Famine, Disease and the Social Order in Early Modern Society, Cambridge University Press, 1991, pp. 121-2;
76. Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, trans. Richard Nice, Polity Press, p. 120.