Three Dwelling Case Studies (17th & 18th Century)  

A small house (early 18th century) 

John Cousens (carter) lived with his wife Mary in a three-roomed house somewhere in the side-street area to the west side of the High Street. Their son, Benjamin (aged twenty-four years) had left home, but their daughter, Mary (aged twenty years) was possibly still living there. When the inventory of Cousens’s goods was made on 6 June 1711, his total estate was valued at £73 8s 9d. Out of this sum, £50 consisted of good debts and a further £16 17s 0d. of his working equipment and horses. The household effects he owned therefore added up to £6 11s 9d., and £3 of this was accounted for by clothing kept in his bedchamber (a pair of green breeches, four coats, two waistcoats, a hat, a pair of shoes and a pair of stockings). The low room was the main living-area and its contents consisted of fire cradle, iron trivet and frying pan, a smoothing iron and two metal heating plates, a quantity of coal, two tables, two armchairs, three other chairs, a looking-glass, some earthenware crocks, two sieves, a posted bed with hangings and coverings, and one other, smaller bed. The wash-house contained two pairs of tongs, two tubs, three keelers and a small boiler. Above these two ground-floor rooms was a bedchamber, which accommodated one bed with its coverings, one livery cupboard, a trunk, a joined stool, one keeler [broad, shallow vessel of wood or metal used for cooling hot liquids], two swills, two other baskets and the clothes previously referred to. The single most expensive item of furniture in the house was the posted bed which, together with its coverings, was valued at 15s.

A medium-sized house (early 17th century)

William Blanncher (cordwainer) lived with his wife, Elizabeth, in a house with five rooms, one of which was his workshop (location not known). They had six children altogether – a son aged eleven years and five daughters aged ten years, eight years, six years, four years and eighteen months respectively. If the number of beds in the house is anything to go by, all the children may still have been living at home, though the boy and two of the girls were to die the following summer in the plague epidemic of 1603. 

Blanncher’s worldly goods were appraised on 24 April 1602 and a value of £17 19s 9d. was placed upon them – plus another £3 15s 9d in money owed to him. The shop’s contents consisted of his tools, various pairs of shoes, items of leather clothing (mainly breeches and sleeves) and a certain quantity of unused leather. The value of all this came to £5 5s 0d, which means that the household effects were worth £12 14s 9d. The hall was the main living-room, with a fireplace situated there, equipped with a range of associated implements (including two roasting-irons). There were also various items of furniture present: a framed table, four small tables, one long form, two large joined stools and two small ones, two large chairs, six small chairs, four cushions, two coffers and one cupboard. This last-named item seems to have been the repository for various pewter plates and saucers, as well as porringers, salt cellars and candlesticks. Finally, there was a posted bed in the room as well, complete with all its coverings. The kitchen was used primarily to store cooking and eating utensils. Skillets, brass pots and kettles, frying pans, latch pans, skimmers and basting ladles are all referred to. So are pewter dishes and saucers, wooden platters and dishes, earthenware vessels, porringers, salt cellars and basins. There was also a certain amount of brewing equipment in the place, as well as a currying pan (for treating hide) and a Bible.

Upstairs, above the hall, kitchen and shop, were two chambers. The principal one, above the hall, contained a posted bedstead with all its appurtenances and two truckle-beds with their coverings. A Danske chest and a framed table stood in the room, a wooden candlestick was used to light it during the hours of darkness, and two drinking glasses were located there. It also served as storage-place and, among the items listed, was a bushel and a half of wheat, two sides of bacon, two saddles (one of which was a pack-saddle), an empty barrel, four bow-staves and a bill. The chamber next door simply contained a bed and its fittings, a pole-axe and certain unspecified objects made of iron. The two most valuable items among all the household effects were the two big beds upstairs, which were appraised at £1 each. Next to them came a brass cauldron in the kitchen, estimated to be worth 13s 4d.  

A large house (late 17th century)

Samuel and Elizabeth Pacy (merchant and wife) lived in a mid-late 16th century building on the east side of the High Street (now Nos. 81-83) and were the richest couple identified in Lowestoft throughout the whole period of study. The house had been the family home for three generations. It has long been divided into two shops, but the basic room-plan of earlier times is still discernible. Pacy made his money from fishing, from the export of red herrings to Italy and from North Sea and Baltic trade – and his wife (a member of the Bardwell family) had brought him lands and rents in the south Norfolk parishes of Topcroft and Denton. He died in September 1680, his wife surviving him by about two years, and her inventory of 18 August 1682 is effectively his as well. At the time it was drawn up, it is likely that the middle one of their three daughters, Elizabeth Ward (a thirty-two year old widow), was living in the house, as well as two of the three sons: William (aged twenty years) and John (aged seventeen years).

According to the document, there were fourteen or fifteen rooms associated with the house, but this number could not have been accommodated within the main building. The hall, parlour, kitchen and pantry can be understood, even today, together with the four chambers above, and the presence of both a cellar and a garret can be accepted. However, the three butteries and the wash-house must have been built on at the back of the house as annexes, with the possibility that one or two of them might even have been free-standing in the yard – unless, of course, there was a cross-wing on the house at one time, of which all external traces have disappeared. 

The discovery by Ivan Bunn of a blocked doorway (some considerable time ago), behind panelling in the eastern wall of the building, does suggest that a cross-wing of some kind once existed. The difficulty of ascertaining whether sculleries were an integral part of a house or were free-standing is a known problem, and one which may apply to other service rooms. There is evidence remaining of least one substantial building having been once situated in the yard of the Pacy house: a brick gable-end dating from the 17th century, which now constitutes part of the northern boundary wall abutting onto Wilde’s Score. On the visual evidence of the type of brickwork built up above the line of the gable, the conversion work was done during the late 18th/early 19th century. From the total value of the inventory, which adds up to £2,849, the following sums have to be deducted in order to ascertain the value of the house’s contents: £1043 7s 6d in trading craft, fishing vessels, equipment and stock; £1,065 2s 2d in mortgages and bonds; £284 2s 10d in cash; and £282 13s 7d in good debts. This leaves a figure of £173 14s. 8d. as the value of all furniture, fittings, linenware and utensils. 

The hall and the parlour were “polite” rooms, for sitting in comfort. Both were heated and were furnished with leather chairs. The hall’s main table was covered with a carpet (a smaller, round table is also referred to); there was a case-clock present in the room; six cushions were to be found there; the windows had curtains; firearms and swords were mounted on the walls; there were seven pictures hanging; and forty books were present to provide reading material. The parlour was even more refined, with its leather chairs, three Spanish tables (together with Turkish and Dornic carpets as coverings), drinking glasses in their own special cabinet, brass ornaments and a looking-glass, and landscapes on the walls. These pictures are especially interesting because, in the absence of an English school of painters and given Samuel Pacy’s trading-links with The Netherlands, they might possibly have been works by Ruysdael, Hobbema and the like. The reference to Dornic derives from Doornik, the Flemish name for Tournai, where heavy damask cloth for use as coverings and curtains was made.

The kitchen had considerable seating capacity, with its eighteen stools and two chairs, which seems to suggest that substantial numbers of people sat down to eat there. There was a large, leafed table present in the room, which had a carpet to cover it, and also a smaller table as well. A total of thirty-four pieces of earthenware are itemised, as well as various fire-irons, jacks, spits and basting spoons, and thirty-six napkins and twenty-four towels were also kept there. The pantry was the chief storage place for the household pewter. There was so much of it that the individual pieces were not named, but the weight given instead (144 pounds). There were also thirty-six plates listed, but the material from which they were made is not specified. The three butteries are described as containing “small goods”, but apart from one press and three latch-pans (implements for skimming off fat) nothing is individually named. The wash-house appears to have contained nothing associated with washing, being largely the storage-place for a variety of cooking utensils. The final space referred to on the ground-floor was a writing closet. It stood somewhere at the back of the house and possibly served as an office of some kind, the contents being a quantity of paper and two old cases.

Upstairs, three of the four bedrooms were heated (hall, parlour and kitchen chambers), implying that the house was served by both off-centre and end stacks. The only one without such amenity was the pantry chamber, which contained one bed, one chest and a close-stool, and which had sheets, pillowcases and table-cloths stored within. The other three were more comfortably appointed, especially the hall chamber, which was the principal bedroom. Its two windows were curtained; it had a bed worth £10 (the most valuable item of furniture in the house); a small table and a nest of drawers featured among the pieces of furniture; it had six chairs upholstered with Turkish carpet material; and ten cushions added further to the general air of refinement. A good deal of napery and linen was kept there, as was the family’s gold and silver plate (worth £18 15s 0d). No chest or coffer is referred to in connection with the valuables, which means that they may have been on open display. There was also a closet in the room, which contained ten reams of paper and certain earthenware vessels. The parlour chamber, next door, was much more simply furnished. It contained bedding (a curtain, rug, valance and two pillows), but no bed, and it may have been used as some kind of upstairs sitting-room because there was a table inside, with two chairs and two stools. The kitchen chamber had a bed inside it, worth £8, and its window had curtains. Six chairs and two stools stood within the room, and there were fire-irons for the hearth. 

Above the bedchambers were two garrets, the north and the south ones (reflecting the alignment of the house, lengthways to the street). The terminology suggests that the roof-space was partitioned and that the southern room was heated, if the presence there of andirons is significant. It seems to have been the larger of the two spaces and contained two beds and bedsteads, two tables, six chairs, two stools, a standard (either a large wooden candlestick or a storage box)), two trunks, a chest, a box and twenty-seven pairs of sheets – these last-named being worth £18. The northern room was more simply furnished and may have functioned as servants’ quarters, containing two beds, two settles and other, unnamed items.

The three examples cited here represent only a very small proportion of the surviving Lowestoft probate inventories studied (3%), but they do serve to give some sense of domestic arrangements in varying levels of society at different points within the overall time-scale of study (1560-1730). The Pacy house is particularly interesting, serving perhaps to demonstrate the spread of luxury goods (from concentration in London society) into the provinces, which took place progressively throughout the 17th century. And, in representing evidence of what has become known as “conspicuous consumption”, it (and others like it, such as the Wilde family residence next door) calls into question the attention paid to the 18th century as the great age of developing consumerism. 

A good deal of study has been devoted to the increasing acquisition of consumer goods among the middling orders of society and Lowestoft’s wealthier inhabitants certainly had the means to indulge themselves in domestic comforts. The Pacy dwelling may also reveal the influence of its female head in a number of internal arrangements. Women’s predilection for looking-glasses, clocks and pictures was a feature of the time, and it is likely that Elizabeth Pacy herself was more influential than her husband in the décor of their home. Given its maritime trading-links with London and other English ports, as well as with European countries, the family was also well placed to be aware of developments in contemporary taste and fashion.

CREDIT: David Butcher