Belton Booze 1730s

booze a variant of Middle English bous "intoxicating drink," (mid-14c.), which is from Middle Dutch buse "drinking vessel" (also as a verb, busen "to drink heavily").

What were Viscount & Viscountess Tyrconnel, their friends and servants drinking? The steward's detailed record reveals all.

This part looks at the types of booze laid in Belton's cellar, the second part examines C18 drinking habits - how much was gulped down.

Valentine Hasledine, steward to Viscount Tyrconnel third owner of Belton House, pages 1 & 2 ¹

This book contains an account of the expenses in the cellars of, house, stables, gardens, butcher's bills etc. as delivered in weekly by the several servants belonging to The Right Honourable The Lord Viscount Tyrconnel, under whose care the same respectively are, begun November the seventh 1737

The cellar stock (transcription) runs from that date to 7th August 1739, bearing in mind that Tyrconnel lived at his London home, 23 Arlington Street, between January and June each year. There are no London records surviving. What Hasledine bought in as hogsheads and pipes then bottled gives an idea of the variety of beverages available for imbibition. He enters bottles as dozens and quarts.

Hasledine decanted pipes of red or white port into exactly 44 dozen bottles. A pipe equates to 126, Old English (Queen Anne 1706) wine gallons (each 3,790 ml) used before introduction of the Imperial gallon of 1824. This indicates a Belton wine bottle capacity of ~904 ml compared to today's 750 ml. Remaining wine of less than a dozen bottles Hasledine recorded as quarts. The quart capacity has some uncertainty, but here is taken as one quarter of the wine gallon, 918 ml, i.e. the same as a Belton wine bottle. His system of dozens and quarts also applied to bottled cider and ale. And so, these intoxicants are expressed as bottles consumed.

The beverage types as written by Hasledine are given below according to the number of bottles laid in over that 21 month period (Tyrconnel in residence at Belton for a total of 11 months).

Claret is the liquor for boys; port for men

Out of the 5,420 bottles laid in, the Tyrconnels' favourite tipples are clear. French wine is likely claret. The Methuen Treaty of 1703 guaranteed that the import duty on Portuguese wines, like port were taxed one third less than French ones. In the 1730s, Prime Minister Robert Walpole paid his wine merchants 5s a bottle for champagne, 4s for burgundy & claret, 3s for sack, 2s for red port and 1s / 8d (£14 RPI) for white port. ²

Using the port bottle price, these cellar bottles were worth an estimated £95,000 today (RPI).

Spirits as quart bottles.

Shrub is a fruit liqueur, typically made with rum or brandy mixed with sugar and the juice or rinds of citrus fruit. A quart of rum or brandy used in a punch would cost 6s. Together with arrack at 8s, the spirits in the cellar were worth £4,000 (RPI)

Beer brewed on site, 13 batches of hogsheads delivered to the cellar, each barrel containing 51 gallons. Brewed mainly in the spring, but also summer and autumn.

Arrack

William Hogarth published a 1737 illustration of a satirical monument to the notorious Covent Garden coffee-house owner Tom King. It features casks of Arrack and Brandy. The coffe house also featured prostitutes. The print comes accompanied by a verse that provides a more detailed explanation (British Museum). Arrack came from Batavia in the Dutch East Indies. Like Rum, arrack was distilled from sugarcane. Fermentation came from red rice, combined with local yeast. After further fermentation in Teak tubs, the final drink was 70% alcohol proof.

Small beer

Small beer is a weak beer with an alcohol percentage of around 0.5% to 2.8%. Mainly drunk by servants during work, it provided rehydration and a source of calories. In Belton's context, the two wells in the basement would likely be contaminated by the Witham's water table, downstream from Grantham's effluent. At the turn of the C19 an extant conduit house piped in fresh water from a spring near Old Wood.

The Marquis of Kildare's household book, 1758 has many restrictions on over indulgence with small beer, none before breakfast! It recommends a maximum of 6 pints a day for one male servant, 4 to 6 pints for the kitchen staff probably female.

Frontiniac is the anglicised version of Frontignac; a sweet muscadine wine from the Languedoc region of France.

Canary sack, a sweet fortified white wine produced in the Canary Islands.

Rhenish (or Rheinhessen) is a German wine that comes from the areas around the Rhine River, generally white or rosé.

Malmsey is a fortified wine made from the Malvasia family of grape varieties in Madeira. It is the sweetest, richest form of Madeira.

Next the weekly imbibing.

Header image: Belton's wine cellar refashioned in the early 19th dentury.1 . BNLW 2/6/1/10 Lincolnshire Archives2. Luddington C. (2009) "Claret Is the Liquor for Boys; Port for Men": How Port Became the "Englishman's Wine," 1750s to 1800. Journal of British Studies Vol. 48, No. 2, Special Issue on Material Culture (Apr., 2009), pp. 364-390

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