Leisure and Shopping in the Small Towns of Georgian England

Abstract

This article brings a fresh perspective to the crowded field of early-modern consumption and material culture by offering an explicitly spatialized reading of the provision of and relationship between leisure and shopping. Exploring the entire urban network of northwest England, it demonstrates that leisure facilities, shops, and services became increasingly widespread during the course of the eighteenth century. This reflected both the broad dissemination of the spatial practices of polite society and the power of such activities to represent towns and their inhabitants as respectable. Yet the analysis also makes clear the importance of spatial-hierarchical interaction between towns and individual consumers’ imaginings of the regional retail and leisure space in shaping the spatial distribution of material culture in Georgian England.