Champagne and Shambles: The Arkwrights and the Downfall of the Landed Aristocracy

This is a very readable book about the decline of a major landowning family in Herefordshire living in one of our most amazing country houses. Whatever one's views on large landowners, this is a moving story of an essentially decent family, well respected and with a high sense of duty, who lost their esate principally because of changing economic forces they could not comprehend. Catherine Beale has carried out immense research using the family archives, and has set the family's story against the background of changing trends in farming - again well researched and documented.

Champagne and Shambles (3/3 people found this helpful)

Champagne and shambles is the story of the Arkwrights of Hampton Court in Herefordshire. With a fortune made in the cotton industry after the invention of the spinning jenny, the Arkwrights, like so many industrialists, set up as landed gentry. For over a century from 1810, their large estate with its historic mansion became a model of the latest farming methods. As enlightened agriculturalists they adopted every new improvement for their 10,000 acres and they established a prize herd of Hereford cattle.

With the repeal of the Corn Laws and subsequently the introduction of refrigerated transport ships, foreign wheat and meat flooded into Britain and prices for farm produce collapsed. Rents had to be reduced, mortgages were called in and agricultural land found few buyers. Like thousands of the landed gentry, the Arkwrights had to abandon their estates, their privileged life style and their status in their county and country. Catherine Beale's absorbing and meticulously evidenced account records the fall from power of the landowning class in Britain.

How the other half lived and sank (0/0 people found this helpful)

My wife and I enjoyed "Champagne and Shambles" enormously. Extremely interesting social history which must have involved a great deal of research. But is easy reading, not at all dry and made the extensive Arkwright family come alive. They link the industrial revolution through the Victorian landowner era to the effects of the political upheavals of the Lloyd George budget at the beginning of the 20th century.

Reaching for the champagne... (3/3 people found this helpful)

You can sort of see why Johnny Arkwright needed to reach for the champagne to escape the huge stress of maintaining Hampton Court and all its surrounding land: It was no party. It's amazing to think that less than 150 years ago, a quarter of the land in England and Wales was in the hands of just 710 people. No wonder there was what Catherine Beale describes as a "quiet revolution"! It's the sort of figure that sheds a great deal of light of the transformation that the British countryside has undergone since then. Catherine Beale really brings that transformation to light in this meticulously researched history, and even the most fervently anti-landlord reader can't help but be charmed by the colourful characters in the Arkwright family. It's by charting their downfall from the landed aristocracy that Beale brings to life the economics of it all. It's quite astonishing really how the Arkwrights lived quite happily at their ancestral home while accumulating so much debt, without seeming to realise where it was all headed. Beale has a wonderful turn of phrase and you can really feel her sympathy for the family. This is a must-read for anyone with a passing interest in the history of rural England and the landed aristocracy.

Champagne and Shambles: The Arkwrights and the Downfall of the Landed Aristocracy

Catherine Beale

Reader Reviews:

A quiet revolution (0/0 people found this helpful)

Champagne and Shambles (3/3 people found this helpful)

How the other half lived and sank (0/0 people found this helpful)

Reaching for the champagne... (3/3 people found this helpful)

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