The study sites

The translation of the ‘ethnographies of place’ approach into the British context represents a potentially exciting and innovative direction for understanding everyday life in nineteenth-century cities. The project is premised on the idea that the study of material culture – as preserved in the archaeological record – coupled with the careful interrogation of related documentary evidence can provide new insights into the complexity and diversity of Victorian London life. To pilot the approach, we centred our investigations on a number of large-sized, mid-nineteenth-century archaeological assemblages from different three sites across the city. The materials were excavated between 1973 and 1993 and the resulting finds are now curated by the London Archaeological Archive and Research Centre (LAARC).

The specific sites were selected on the basis of preliminary contextual research and the richness of the artefact assemblages (they represent a small proportion of the LAARC’s post-medieval collections). Five discrete assemblages, rapidly dumped in cellar, backyard drainage and sanitary features upon their abandonment, were examined. They comprise a variety of domestic and trade related objects, particularly glass, ceramics, and clay pipes, and similar durable substances, together with a small amount of food waste, probably discarded between the 1840s–50s. The first assemblage relates to a commercial-residential property in New Palace Yard, Westminster (NPY73); the second belonged to a row of cottages in Lower Sydenham (SYB92); whilst the third, fourth and fifth assemblages were deposited by the inhabitants of three tenements on Regent Street, (later Gill Street) Limehouse (LHC93), a poor, dockside neighbourhood in the East End. This provided the opportunity to examine the material culture of households from three socially and geographically contrasting areas in the east, west and south of London.

New Palace Yard, Westminster (NPY73)

Lower Sydenham (SYB92)

Regent Street, Limehouse (LHC93)