Assembly rooms [ Sports & Leisure / Associational culture / Dance, Music & Songs ]
… that encouraged and regulated sociability in the long eighteenth century, spaces where conversation, music, and dancing occurred. According to Peter Borsay, the oldest known assembly rooms date to the 1650s or 1660s in Tunbridge … offered in any given town or city. Inns were constructed with rooms specifically designed for large gatherings and dancing, an ideal place for the local community to gather. The 1838 advertisement for the sale of Whitby’s Angel Inn … in which any ‘polite’ community could gather. By 1795, the word ‘assembly’ was specifically linked with the activity of dancing in John Ash’s New and Complete Dictionary of the English Language , defining ‘assembly’ as ‘a company of people …
Assemblies | Community | Dance | Entertainement | Leisure | Music | Politeness | Women
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