A very English affair? Furnishing the Hanoverian English country house

The English elite have long drawn inspiration from contemporary and historical cultures in mainland Europe, most notably Italy and France. These influences were sometimes mediated by British architects and craftsmen, but wealthy landowners also acquired goods directly from the Continent, sometimes in the form of collecting on the Grand Tour and sometimes through shopping trips to Paris. These consumption practices have received considerable attention, but there has been little attempt to question the extent to which they spread beyond a metropolitan-oriented elite or to explore what happened when direct supplies from the Continent (and especially France) were disrupted by political tension or outright war. This paper takes a case study approach, examining the furnishing of Stoneleigh Abbey in Warwickshire through the Hanoverian period. It draws on a rich collection of bills to assess the network of craftsmen and retailers who supplied the house: who were they and what were their credentials? It also examines the character of the furnishings supplied, not to provide a detailed furniture history, but rather to explore the style and quality of the goods: to what extent was the material culture of this English country house truly English? These questions have much wider implications, of course, for the construction of English identity and culture through the long eighteenth century.