ABSTRACT
The architect-designed cottage was an eighteenth-century cultural phenomenon. Architectural ideas and architects were traded within polite society through a network of shared family connections, education, clubs, social activities, visits and letters. Equally, patrons commissioned architects to build cottages and connoisseurs took an intellectual interest in cottages through subscriptions to architectural books. Yet, the patrons of cottage architecture were not necessarily the same people as the consumers of architectural books on cottages. This chapter considers the consumption of the cottage within polite society group, extended from the royal family and aristocracy. Inclusion and exclusion from polite society was self-policed through the mutual recognition, or not, of shared beliefs, values, manners and taste in art, literature and material culture. The uniform, plain neoclassical style of the houses in Broadhall can be contrasted with the cottages of similar size built in the same period in the London suburbs and genteel resort towns such as Sidmouth or Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent.
