1800s Typical Game Bird Dishes Served during the 1800s. These are the sort of dishes Jane Austen’s family would have eaten on a regular basis. Banded Partridges, Roast Partridges, Roast Surrey Fowl, Larded Guinea Fowl, Roast Plovers, Stuffed Capons, Roast Gosling and Roast Pigeons. From: 1850s- 1860s Mrs. Beeton’s Books of Household Management. via Google Books (PD-150)
1808 Silver Wax Jack, Irish. By Robert Breading (active 1775–1822) Dublin. via suzilove.com and Metropolitan Museum New York City, U.S.A. metmuseum.org
How did Jane Austen seal her letters? Wax was melted by lighting the tip of a coiled wax length. This is called a wax jack. The melted wax blob was placed on the outside of a letter or document. A personal desk seal or a fob seal was pressed into the wax to identify the sender or owner of the document. Aristocrat families had their own coat of arms and others may have had their initials or their name on the seal.
Regency Gentleman’s Sporting Life in the times of Jane Austen. By Robert Cruikshank via Google Books Races, bowls, sailing, fox hunting… all the sports enjoyed by people in Regency Era. From: 1826 The English Spy by Robert Cruikshank via Google Books (PD150)
1826 From Regency Family Life. #Regency #Cartoon #England https://books2read.com/suziloveOLD
Continue reading →1826 Locked up in a sponging house on Carey Street, London, because they are unable to pay their bill. From A Regency Gentleman’s Life. From: 1826 The English Spy By Robert Cruikshank. via Google Books (PD-180)
Definition Sponging House: Place of temporary confinement for debtors. Creditors would lay a complaint with the sheriff, the sheriff sent his bailiffs, and the debtor was taken to the local sponging-house. This was not a debtors’ prison but a private house, often the bailiff’s own home. The debtor was held there temporarily in the hope that they could make some arrangement with the creditors.
Light-hearted look at a young man’s day in the early 1800s. Depicts the ups and downs of a young gentleman’s day in the Regency Era, or Jane Austen’s years. Through historic images, historical information, and funny anecdotes, it shows how a young man about town fills his day, where he goes, and who he spends time with. This light-hearted look at the longer Regency years is an easy to read overview of what people did and wore, and where they worked and played. There is plenty of information to interest history buffs, and lots of pictures to help readers and writers of historical fiction visualize the people and places from the last years of the 18th Century until Queen Victoria took the throne. Regency Life Series Book 3 Young Gentleman’s Day.com/suziloveYGD
1826 Sights Jane Austen Saw Around Regency England. 1826 From Regency Life Around England. The sights that Jane Austen and her friends and family would have seen around England. via 1826 The English Spy By Robert Cruikshank via Google Books (PD-150)
Bath had two assembly rooms in the lower part of the town but they weren’t large enough for the rapidly increasing population so on the 30th September, 1771, New Rooms were opened on the north east of the Circus, between Bennett and Alfred Streets. These Upper Rooms were designed by the architect, John Wood, and were in a better part of town so they became much more fashionable. They were called the New, or Upper Rooms, to distinguish them from the older Assembly Rooms in the lower part of the town.
They were a set of public rooms purpose-built for the 18th century form of entertainment called an ‘assembly‘, where a large number of people came together to dance, drink tea, play cards, listen to music, or parade around the rooms and talk and flirt. The four rooms are the Ball Room, the Tea Room or Concert Room, the Octagon Room, and a Card Room. The Upper Rooms held two balls a week, a dress ball on Monday evenings and a fancy ball on Thursdays during the Bath season which was from October to early June. These balls were so popular they attracted between 800 and 1,200 guests at a time.
John Wood raised the money for the New Rooms by a “tontine” subscription, which was like a lottery. By April 1769, £14,000 was raised amongst 53 people. When a subscriber died, their shares were added to the holdings of the other subscribers, which meant that the last surviving subscriber inherited everything.
The exterior of the Upper Assembly Room looks typically Georgian, but the interior is very grand and the high ceilings gave good ventilation on crowded ball nights and windows set at a high level prevented outsiders from looking in. Two long rectangular rooms flank the entrance hall and are linked by an octagonal room at the far end to form a U-shape.
The Assembly Rooms are lit by a set of nine chandeliers, made for the building in 1771. Jonathan Collett of London originally provided a set of five chandeliers for the Ball Room when it opened in September 1771. Shortly afterwards the arm of one of the chandeliers fell off – narrowly missing the artist, Thomas Gainsborough, who lived nearby at the time. The Ball Room chandeliers were taken down and a new set was ordered from William Parker of London. Parker had already supplied three chandeliers for the Tea Room. It was agreed that Jonathan Collett should salvage the rejected set of Ball Room chandeliers and make one large chandelier to hang in the Octagon Room. The chandeliers in the three rooms had an average height of eight feet and they were made of Whitefriars crystal from the Whitefriars Glassworks in London and were originally lit by candles. The Ball Room and Tea Room chandeliers each had 40 lights and the Octagon chandelier had 48 lights.
During the 19th century, they were fitted for gas and were later converted to electric light. At the start of the Second World War, the chandeliers were put into storage and escaped destruction when the Assembly Rooms were bombed in 1942. During the extensive refurbishment of the building in 1988-1991, the chandeliers were restored by R. Wilkinson & Sons of London. The Bath Season ran from October to June. As the Season spanned the winter months and many activities took place in the evening it was essential to provide good artificial lighting.
The ball room is the largest of the three main rooms and is over 105 feet long and 42 feet wide and 42 feet high. It runs the whole length of the north side of the building and covers two storeys. The paint is called Ballroom Blue and was first created by David Mlinaric in the 1970s from an original colour swatch. “It is a stroke of luck that the colour sample of blue paint is still attached to the 1770s minute book of the Assembly Rooms Furnishing Committee.” said Lucy Powell, Assistant Archivist at Bath Record Office, “The building was bombed in 1942 so traces of the paint would never have survived otherwise.” From: Fashion Museum, Bath.
On the other side, the tea room is 70 feet long and 27 feet wide and all the rooms had huge chandeliers to give light. In 1777, a card room was added to the Octagonal Room. Before the Card Room was added, the Octagon Room became famous for card playing, the favorite leisure activity from the Georgian Era through to the Regency, as the Upper Rooms were open for card games every day except Sunday. The Octagon Room is dominated by Gainsborough’s portrait of the first Master of Ceremonies at the Upper Rooms, Captain William Wade. Bath’s most famous Master of Ceremonies, Richard “Beau” Nash, never knew this building as he died in 1761.
The tea room was used for refreshments, with tea generally served weak and black or perhaps with arrack and lemon, and on Wednesday nights during the Season concerts were held there. Fashionable visitors to Bath could also hold breakfasts there for their friends.
Many famous people visited the Assembly Rooms in the 18th and 19th centuries. Jane Austen and Charles Dickens both mention the Assembly Rooms in their novels and the diarist, Francis Kilvert, described a reception there in 1873. Subscription concerts were popular and many well-known musicians also visited, the most distinguished being Joseph Haydn, Johann Strauss the Elder, and Franz Liszt.
Today, the Octagon Room, the Tea Room, and the Cloak room Landings all showcase beautiful paintings and prints as the Upper Rooms were given to the National Trust in 1931. You can see paintings by Thomas Gainsborough and John Simmons as well as an Original ticket to the Thirteenth Dress Ball at the Assembly Rooms, 24 January 1803.
Since 1963, the Upper Assembly Rooms have also housed the amazing Fashion Museum. The building is owned by the National Trust and is leased by Bath & North East Somerset Council.
18th-20th Centuries The Assembly Rooms, Bath, U.K. #RegencyEra #Bath #BritishHistory books2read.com/suziloveROver Share on X1800s Typical Puddings and Pastries.These are the sort of puddings and pastries Jane Austen’s family would have eaten on a regular basis during the early 1800s, or Regency Era. Open Apple Tart, Galette, Apricot Fritters, Pancakes and Apricot Jam, Charlotte Russe, Macaroni Cheese, Cherry Tart, Mince Pies, Almond Puddings, Tartlets, Compote Of Fruit, Fruit Pudding, Fruit Tart, Christmas Plum Pudding, Milk Pudding and Roly Poly Jam Pudding. From: 1850s- 1860s Mrs. Beeton’s Books of Household Management. via Google Books (PD-150). 1800s Typical Puddings and Pastries Served In Households Like Jane Austen’s. https://books2read.com/suziloveOLD
Demolition of the old house, between the Strand and the River Thames, began in 1775 and continued in stages as the new Somerset House was constructed around it. When the new building rose from the rubble, the Royal Academy, which had been one of the last occupants of the old Somerset House, became one of the first occupants of the apartments which fronted the Strand, providing tangible continuity between the old and the new.
The Royal Academy of Arts
George III, described as an “enthusiastic if undiscriminating collector and patron of the arts”, provided invaluable patronage for the three learned societies. When old Somerset House was relinquished by the Crown, the King reserved to himself the right to appropriate sufficient space in the new building for the Royal Academy of Arts, the Royal Society, and the Society of Antiquaries.
The Great Exhibition Room
The most important part of the building for the Royal Academy was its Exhibition Room. Situated at the top of the steep, winding staircase, it was roughly 53 x 43 feet and 32 feet high including the lantern, and was described by Joseph Baretti as, “undoubtedly at that date the finest gallery for displaying pictures so far built.” It was here that George III was given a preview of the first Royal Academy Exhibition held at his command in 1780.
Year by year, the exhibits increased. There were 547 in 1781, 1,037 in 1801, and 1,165 in 1821, so that the pictures had to be hung almost from floor to ceiling and with the frames touching one another. From 1832 onwards there was talk of the Royal Academy moving to more spacious rooms in what is now the National Gallery, which was being built at the north end of Trafalgar Square. Accordingly, the last exhibition at Somerset House was held in 1836.
When the Academy moved, the most valuable decorations were taken down and reused in their new quarters. Later they were moved to Burlington House, the Royal Academy’s present home, where the ceiling paintings by Benjamin West and Angelica Kauffmann can now be seen in the entrance hall. The Academy’s old rooms at Somerset House were occupied by the Department of Practical Art, or Government School of Design.
The Royal Society
In 1776, they discovered they were to share the building to the east of the Strand entrance with the Society of Antiquaries, and complained to William Chambers that the accommodation would be inadequate; that the library would be too small and that there would be no room for the Society’s museum.
One of the first discoveries announced to the Society in its new quarters was that of a new planet, first observed by William Herschel in 1781. He wished to call the new planet Georgium Sidus in honour of the King, but other astronomers disagreed and today we know the planet as Uranus. Fellows of the Royal Society were keen to prevent war and politics interfering with the advancement of scientific discovery.
During the Napoleonic Wars of 1796-1815, the President of the Royal Society, Sir Joseph Banks, used his influence both in England and France to ensure that explorers of the two nations were not obstructed by the conflicting armed forces, and that French scientists should continue to be elected Fellows of the Society. When Sir Humphry Davy became president in 1820, the Society became oriented more towards pure scientific enquiry, to which ends, George IV founded two Gold Medals.
After the Royal Academy left Somerset House in 1837, the Royal Society remained there until 1857 when it joined the Academy at Burlington House.
The Society of Antiquaries
In 1776, the Antiquaries heard about the proposed new building at Somerset House, they decided to apply to George III, their Patron, for rooms there. After some intense lobbying by the President, the Reverend Dr Milles, the Society’s request for accommodation was favourably considered, and the King was, “most graciously pleased to order that the Society be accommodated with apartments in the new buildings at Somerset House.”
The resident Secretary of the Society was accommodated in the attic with three rooms “with deal dadoes, and Sienna marble and Sicilian jasper chimney-pieces”. The basement was hotly contested between the Royal Society and the Antiquaries, who were eventually allowed a kitchen, cellar, two vaults, and a privy. However, the lobby, originally intended for the footman in waiting, had to accommodate the Antiquaries’ porter as the Royal Society had taken possession of the Porter’s Lodge!
In the 1850s there was a proposal to move the Royal Society and the Antiquaries from Somerset House but, when the Royal Society moved out in 1857, the Antiquaries decided to remain, taking the opportunity to secure sole use of the disputed rooms, until they joined the other two learned societies at Burlington House in 1874.
The Navy Board
When the Admiralty moved into new premises in Whitehall in 1725, it was decided that the Navy Board, over whom the Admiralty had responsibility, should move to a site much closer; from Seething Lane behind the Tower of London to new offices at Somerset House. Chambers proposed to house the Navy Board on the west side of the south wing of the new building, in the part facing the river, with the Seamen’s Waiting Hall in the centre of the building providing an imposing entrance.
The related Sick and Hurt, Navy Pay, and Victualling Offices were to occupy the range of buildings on the west side of the courtyard. By 1789 the move was completed and, for nearly a century, more than a third of Somerset House was home to the various branches of the Navy Board.
General Register Office
In 1836 the General Register Office was created to set up a comprehensive system for the registration of Births, Marriages and Deaths and appoint the first Registrar General based at Somerset House. It was not until 1970, after slightly less than a century and a half at Somerset House, that the General Register Office moved out.
Principal Probate Registry
The Inland Revenue Stamp duty on documents, including newspapers, was only one of many revenue-raising methods administered by the Stamp Office, one of the government departments which moved to the new Somerset House in 1789. In 1834 the Stamp Office united with the Affairs of Taxes and in 1849 Stamps and Taxes joined the Excise to form a new Board of Inland Revenue. The Board of Inland Revenue today still occupies the east and west wings of Somerset House.
To read more of the history of Somerset House, visit their fascinating site.
Somerset House, London, UK. London's Best Places To Visit. #London #RegencyEra #BritishHistory https://books2read.com/suziloveROver Share on X1816 Crossing The Pont des Arts, Paris. Illustrations by Francis Courboin. via Les Modes de Paris. (PD-Art) suzilove.comThis plate depicts two women crossing the Pont des Arts, which is also known as the Passerelle des Arts. The women wear very high-waisted dresses. Both women wear a large white feather in their hats, symbolic of the white plume of Henri IV’s famous battle cry, “Ralliez-vous à mon panache blanc!” and made popular by the 1814 restoration of Louis XVIII on the throne. Restoration also brought back various styles, especially those denoting luxury, from the Ancien Regime. The woman on the left wears an ‘old-fashioned’ lace collar and the resurgence of luxury materials, such as fur are indicative of feminine styles of the Restoration period. (PD-Art) Illustrations by François Courboin from Octave Uzanne’s Les Modes de Paris. Variations du goût et de l’esthétique de la femme, 1797-1897, L. Henry May, Paris, 1898, or from the English translation of the same work: Fashion in Paris : the various phases of feminine taste and aesthetics from 1797 to 1897, William Heinemann, London, 1898. Modes De Paris
