Conor Lucey introduces this scholarly work by outlining the meanings of house and home, how houses were designed versus how lives were lived; essentially the relationship between people and their domestic spaces in what is historically referred to as “the long 18th century” whether in castles, city dwellings or cabins in Georgian Ireland. Nine essays explore the contrasts between country house grandees obsessing over staircases to lowly cabin dwellers sleeping on straw.
Emma O’Toole describes how childbirth “lying-in” usually lasted four to six weeks and how the bedchamber, a private, personal space, became more public after the birth where guests were welcomed and entertained. Straw placed on the street outside the home was a custom indicating an expectant mother inside.
Dining room
Patricia McCarthy’s consideration of the dining room, a term that replaced parlour in the mid 18th century shows how it was fundamentally a male domain with opportunities to impress guests with food, wine and decor. White linen tablecloths were commonly used to wipe the mouth and couples were separated after dinner, unheard of in France, the inebriated state of the men being the reality at this time. McCarthy describes a formal dinner at Belvedere in Co Meath where Lord Belfield entertained three male friends to dinner served by four valets in laced clothes “and seven or eight footmen”. Imagine!
The rising importance of conspicuous consumption and the contest between formal display and everyday convenience is explored by Melanie Hayes describing how Luke Gardiner’s taste and vision came into play when furnishing his Henrietta Street house. Hospitality was essential to maintaining social standing and political power and the trend for country house parties had similar aims as Judith Hill’s essay detailing Lord and Lady Charleville’s lavish entertainment of royalty amply illustrates.
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Conor Lucey focuses on the domestic lives of single men showing how domesticity and consumption were not just female preserves. Claudia Kinmonth’s study of how people slept and ate in two-room dwellings cites writers disgusted to find animals and people sleeping in one room. She observes that “frugality, adaptability and communality were the shared experiences… with one object fulfilling multiple functions rather than multiple objects serving individual functions in more affluent households, a trait that continued well into the 20th century”.
