Single People and the Material Culture of the English Urban Home in the Long Eighteenth Century

This chapter examines the evidence of the material culture of the homes of single people living in Bridgnorth, a Shropshire market town serving a defined rural hinterland, and a river port on the busy and longest navigable river in England, during the long eighteenth century. The material culture of the home has received much attention in the last 30 years. Similarly, the lives of single women and in particular widows have long been of interest. In comparison, single men have received little attention, and work that brings together these areas is scattered, usually brief or part of a larger undertaking.1 Our research has been concerned with singleness as a product of life cycle and lifestyle choice although not explicitly with the interaction of urbane culture and the single estate.2 However, for many single people urban life provided the backdrop, consolation and milieu through which singleness was experienced and some of its most discordant and isolating effects were ameliorated.3 Using Bridgnorth as a case study allows us to examine the intersections of singleness, urban life, the ownership of material goods, and definitions of selfhood and to extend the range of existing scholarship which has tended to focus primarily upon women and to overlook the importance of the material culture of the household.4