This book takes a fresh look at a familiar building
type - the town house in eighteenth-century London - and
investigates the circumstances in which individuals made
decisions about living in London, and particularly about
their West End house. It uncovers what occupants of town
houses thought about their property, why and how they
chose or built it, paid for it, used it, decorated it
and sold or bequeathed it, and what uses it had for them
beyond simply accommodation. For the first time, this
book takes as a starting point the houseowner, occupant
or architect's client, and through extensive and
original use of anecdotal evidence, opens up a wealth of
unforeseen values, uses and connections attaching to the
house. It offers a serious analysis of clients' wants
and needs, and describes the house's function within and
impact upon people's lives, concerns and
aspirations.Stewart shows how the use of the house
comprised much more than how life was lived in it on a
day-to-day basis, or even how it served special
occasions, and included how it functioned in the context
of family relations, financial, legal and property
transactions, and the market, as well as in the
construction of personal identity.At the same time as
exploring private perceptions and expectations, Stewart
reveals the negative press attention the town house
received in its own time. The house unsettled many
eighteenth-century observers, and Stewart analyses an
unprecedented range of evidence, to demonstrate how the
house was associated with notions of transience,
changeability, imperfection, luxury, and selfishness,
which resulted in its characterization as
inconsequential, inconstant, insubstantial, intemperate
and ultimately emasculate.By stepping away from
conventional tales of economics, materials, or style,
and into the previously unexplored world of the
houseowner, the book offers an entirely original reading
of a familiar building. |
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