Household Accounts of the Le Strange Family, 1606-1626

UKDA study number:5726

Principal Investigators

Whittle, J.
Griffiths, E.
University of Exeter. School of Humanities and Social Sciences . Department of History

Sponsors

Economic and Social Research Council
Arts and Humanities Research Council

Distributed by

UK Data Archive, University of Essex, Colchester.

March 2008

Bibliographic Citation

All works which use or refer to these materials should acknowledge these sources by means of bibliographic citation. To ensure that such source attributions are captured for bibliographic indexes, citations must appear in footnotes or in the reference section of publications. The bibliographic citation for this data collection is:

Whittle, J. and Griffiths, E., Household Accounts of the Le Strange Family, 1606-1626 [computer file]. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Archive [distributor], March 2008. SN: 5726, http://dx.doi.org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-5726-1.

Acknowledgement

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Any publication, whether printed, electronic or broadcast, based wholly or in part on these materials should carry a statement that the original data creators, depositors or copyright holders, the funders of the Data Collections (if different) and the UK Data Archive bear no responsibility for their further analysis or interpretation.

Copyright:
Jane Whittle, University of Exeter

Disclaimer

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5726 . Household Accounts of the Le Strange Family, 1606-1626
(The Housewife in Early Modern Rural England)

Depositor:

Whittle, J. , University of Exeter. School of Humanities and Social Sciences . Department of History

Principal Investigators:

Whittle, J. , University of Exeter. School of Humanities and Social Sciences . Department of History

Griffiths, E. , University of Exeter. School of Humanities and Social Sciences . Department of History

Sponsors:

Economic and Social Research Council
Arts and Humanities Research Council
Grant Number: RES-143-25-0014

Abstract:

The database was created for a project which ran from 2003-2007 titled ‘The housewife in early modern rural England: gender, markets and consumption’, funded by the ESRC and AHRC as part of the ‘Cultures of Consumption’ research programme. The project was centred on a detailed study of the household accounts of the Le Strange family of Hunstanton, Norfolk, from 1606-1654, which from 1610 onwards were kept by Lady Alice Le Strange. These accounts are both remarkably long running and complete, and exceptionally detailed. They are also notable in having been written by a married woman. The accounts have been used to examine patterns of consumption in this early seventeenth century household, the gendered nature of the household economy, and the level of market development in this period. The main output of the project will be a book, authored by Jane Whittle and Elizabeth Griffiths: ‘Consumption and Gender in the Early Seventeenth Century Household: The World of Alice Le Strange’ which is under contract with Oxford University Press for publication in 2009.

Main Topics:

This digital resource consists of a relational database based on the household accounts kept by Sir Hamon Le Strange of Hunstanton, Norfolk, from 1606-1610, and by his wife Lady Alice Le Strange, from 1610-1654. The original documents are housed at the Norfolk Record Office, Norwich. The database contains a summary of all Hamon and Alice’s surviving household accounts, which included receipt accounts recording sources of income; disbursement accounts recording purchases; building accounts; kitchen books recording purchases, gifts, consumption of food, and farm labour; and miscellaneous notes. The heart of the database is a transcription of the disbursement accounts from 1606-1626, receipt accounts from 1606-1613 and 1619-21, and kitchen accounts from 1619-21: a total of 18,000 entries from the original accounts. The transcriptions in the database are entered both in their original spelling, and in a modernised form. The database categorises the entries, includes a dictionary of obscure words, and indexes of places and names.

Coverage:

Time Period Covered: 1606 - 1654
Dates of Fieldwork: 2003 - 2007
Date file created
Country: England
Geography: Hunstanton; Norfolk
Spatial Units: No spatial unit
Observation Units: Individuals; Families/households
Kind of Data: Textual data; Numeric data; Alpha/numeric data

Universe Sampled:

Location of Units of Observation: Subnational
Population: Records of consumption in the Le Strange household, Hunstanton, Norfolk, 1606 - 1654

Methodology:

Time Dimensions: Cross-sectional (one-time) study
Sampling Procedures: No sampling (total universe)
Method of Data Collection: Transcription of existing materials; Compilation or synthesis of existing material
Data Sources:
Original documents housed in the Norfolk Record Office (NRO), Norwich: document references LEST P6, LEST P7, LEST P8, LEST P9, LEST P10, and LEST P11.
Weighting: No weighting used

Language(s) of Written Materials:

Study Description: English
Study Documentation: English

Access:

Access Conditions: The depositor has specified that registration is required and standard conditions of use apply. The depositor may be informed about usage. See terms and conditions for further information.
Availability: History Data Service, UK Data Archive
Contact: Help desk: hds@essex.ac.uk

Date of First Release:

17 March 2008

Copyright:

Jane Whittle, University of Exeter

File last updated:

31 October 2011