Time and space in a dish: examining the relationship between materiality and space in the early modern saloop stall

Abstract

ABSTRACT Walking in the early morning in London in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries you would have come across a new consumption space, the saloop stall. These stalls operated for only a few hours before being packed away. Yet in their time they offered to labouring Londoners, its watchmen and chimney sweeps, a warm respite. Taking a microhistorical approach, this paper provides the first critical examination of these spaces. It looks to establish the temporality of these stalls and how they were situated in the broader urban routines. It also analyses the role materiality played in establishing these spatialities. This paper looks to reframe the stall’s ceramic cups and hot tea urns, demonstrating how they were crucial to creating a space of labour and sociability, removed from the domestic context they have often been associated with. This research is approached via a wide range of sources such as contemporary literature, visual culture and court testimonies. Consideration is given to material and sensorial attributes; factors that inform the creation and use of this space at every turn. It hopes to provide an example of the value taking a material and sensory-based approach when researching itinerant street traders.