Drawing particularly, but not exclusively upon probate inventories, this
paper attempts to explore how far and in what ways a distinctive bourgeois
culture was projected through the the acquisition and use of a variety of
furnishings and fittings within later medieval houses. Three lines of
enquiry will be central to the discussion, viz. how are urban homes
different from rural; how are higher status (bourgeois) homes different
from lower status; what does material culture tell us about social and
gender relations within the household. In posing these questions it is
necessary to be alert, so far as the evidence allows within what must
necessarily be a preliminary survey, to the dynamics of time and cultural
geography.