As part of our project, we want to encourage scholars and students to make use of household accounts, which are wonderful sources for studying all sorts of historical subjects. This page will continue to be updated with resources for further exploring the Fitzwilliam household accounts from sixteenth-century Ireland.
The simple, interactive tool on the right allows you to see exactly what foods were consumed at Dublin Castle on specific days in 1574. This is based on a full transcription of the daily entries from the Fitzwilliam accounts (MS 51) held by Northamptonshire Record Office. The underlying dataset will be published open access at the end of the FoodCult project.
The household accounts underpinned a research article written by FoodCult members, Charlie Taverner and Susan Flavin. It analysed the accounts for what they reveal about food, the culture of consumption, and power in sixteenth-century Ireland. The article can be read in the Historical Journal.
