Shop

The Shop

The Arley gift shop offers a fine range of gifts from china cups and saucers and glassware to garden books and jewellry. Birthday and celebration cards can also be purchased along with many gifts exclusive to Arley including watercolour prints by Elizabeth, the late Lady Ashbrook and an illustrative book "The Story of a Garden ARLEY 1831 - 1991" also written by Lady Elizabeth. Arley tea towels and stationery are also available.

At Christmas the shop opens from Saturday 4th - Sunday 12th December and sells beautiful christmas gifts from tree decorations to opulent oil burner oils.

Many of the gifts in the shop can be purchased by contacting Caroline Fearon, the shop manager, on 01565 777353 or via email at caroline.fearon@arleyhallandgardens.com

Arley Hall Press

Vol. 1 - Four Cheshire Townships UK - £6.65, Europe Airmail- £8.00, Rest of the World - £9.00 Four Cheshire Townships in the 18th Century - Arley, Appleton, Stockton Heath and Great Budworth ~ Charles F. Foster April 1992, 88 pp., 7 maps, 5 b/w illus., 25 x 17 cm., paperback ISBN 0 9518382 0 2.

This is a unique snapshot of rural life in the eighteenth century. It details the lives of the residents of 8,600 acres in the four townships - from Sir Peter Warburton of Arley Hall to Jonathan Berry, a sheep shearer. Extraordinary details of these people's incomes and occupations have survived in rare tax returns, maps, rentals and deeds in the Arley Hall archives.

Vol. 2 - Cheshire Cheese and Farming UK - £8.95, Europe Airmail – £10.00, Rest of the World - £12.00 Cheshire Cheese and Farming in the North West in the 17th & 18th Centuries ~ Charles F. Foster
May 1998, 128 pp., 4 maps, 28 b/w illus., 25 17 cm., paperback ISBN 0 9518382 1 0.

In 1650 the first ship loaded with Cheshire cheese sailed from Chester to London. So popular did it become that within a few years several pubs in London were called The Cheshire Cheese. This trade led to important changes in the shape of rural life in the North-West. In the course of charting these developments Charles Foster provides fascinating details about daily life on the farms, the people who worked the land and the men who sailed the ships between London and north-western ports.

Vol. 3 - Seven Households (paperback) – UK - £11.95, Europe Airmail - £14.00, Rest of the World - £18.00 (hardback) – UK - £19.95, Europe Airmail - £23.00, Rest of the World - £28.00 Life in Cheshire and Lancashire 1582-1774 ~ Charles F. Foster. Dec. 2002, pp. xviii, 248, 5 maps, 4 col. 55 b/w illus., 25 x 17 cm. Hardback ISBN 09518382 2 9. Paperback ISBN 09518382 2 9.

The descriptions of three major gentry households - Smithills from the 1580s to the 1600s, Tabley from the 1630s to the 1680s and Arley between 1740 and 1780 are contrasted with the lives of more ordinary people. The Fells of Swarthmoor were much engaged in business, Thomas Jackson and Richard Latham were brought up on 15 and 20 acre farms while George Dockwra lived quietly on a small pension as a lodger in a farmhouse. These detailed examples were designed to support and enrich the thesis set out in the fourth and final volume of this series.

Vol. 4 - Capital and Innovation UK - £16.95, Europe Airmal - £19.00, Rest of the World - £23.00 How Britain became the First Industrial Nation - A Study of the Warrington, Knutsford, Northwich and Frodsham Area 1500-1780 ~ Charles F.Foster. Foreword by Professor Francois Crouzet. Paperback - October 2004, pp xviii, 374 , 9 maps, 16 col. & 45 b/w illust., 25 x 17 cm. ISBN 0-9518382-4-5.

This detailed study of a small area of the Mersey basin in north Cheshire makes a vital contribution to one of the greatest historical debates. The implications of Charles Foster's ground-breaking book lift it far above the level of local history, though it is a masterly example of that too. Foster argues that, in the sixteenth century, there was a major redistribution of wealth away from the Church, the Crown and the major gentry. As a result a business society emerged in the North-West of England in the seventeenth century. Changes in property law, the great inflation in land values and the pastoral agriculture in that area meant that a large number of families of the middling sort were able to pass on a bit of capital to each of their children. Many of these children then moved into trade and manufacture, or paid their passage across the Atlantic to set up in business in the northern colonies of America.

With so many small property owners in the area, landowning gentry did not dominate local society as they did in the South and East of England. So the 'business' culture of the North-West and of America was able to withstand the 'gentry' culture of the South of England and the rest of Europe. The great expansion of trade around the Atlantic, in which sugar, tobacco, cotton, timber and grain were exchanged for English manufactures, created so much wealth that some of the rich businessmen in the North-West were willing to venture their capital to develop the canal system, mechanical spinning and an effective steam engine - the innovations that drove the Industrial Revolution.

Based on sixteen years' research into four centuries' worth of original documents, Charles Foster's book combines the broadest and boldest of sweeps in his conclusions with the best sort of in-depth study, that gets down to the grass-roots level and allows him to introduce real individuals and families into his account.

Part I The redistribution of wealth 1530 - 1670 1. Introduction. 2. Two landed estates: the Leicesters of Tabley, 1362-1832 and the Warburtons of Arley, 1500-1874. 3. Changes in the distribution of wealth in the sixteenth century. 4. The occupations of people in north Cheshire 1560-1646. 5. Social changes and the distribution of wealth in the seventeenth century.

Part II The emergence of a business society 1650-1780 6. The character of north-western society after 1650. 7. The salt industry around Northwich 1535-1770. 8. A Quaker family group 1650-1815: the Hough family and their connections in the Warrington area. 9. The sailcloth manufacturers of Warrington 1741-1770. 10. The wealth and occupations of the inhabitants of Warrington 1771.

Part III Comparisons 11. The business society of Cheshire and Lancashire compared with other societies.

Bibliography and indices of names, places and subjects.

Appendices list the freeholders, leaseholders and taxpayers (with the area, value and rent of their farms) in Allostock, Antrobus, Appleton, Aston by Budworth, Cogshall, Great Budworth, Nether Peover, Nether Tabley, Over Whitley, Sevenoaks and Sutton Weaver at dates between 1526 and 1753.

These books can be bought direct from the Arley Hall Press, Northwich, CW9 6NA. Prices include postage and packing. To order, telephone 01565 777 231/353 or by email to enquiries@arleyhallandgardens.com