Cousin Kate
A little of Country Home Life

The amount of detail and research which goes into Georgette Heyer's novels is fascinating. For instance, when Lady Broome goes to collect Kate, at one point she goes into the kitchen, and finds Sarah "testing the heat of the oven with her hand." In those days the only way to find out if the oven was the right temperature was to put your hand into it for a specified time, depending on the heat required for whatever you were about the cook. If you could keep your hand in longer, the oven was not hot enough. If it got too hot for your hand, the oven was too hot.
Here are a few samples of cookery and housekeeping books covering roughly the period of the book, and also some information on the "Fox and Geese" board game.

Cooking

NEW LONDON COOKERY (THE), AND COMPLETE DOMESTIC GUIDE. [Second title:] The Cook's Complete Guide, on the Principles of Frugality, Comfort, and Elegance: including the Art of Carving, and the most approved method of setting-out a table, explained by numerous copper-plate engravings; instructions for preserving health, and attaining old age; with directions for breeding and fattening all sorts of poultry, and for the management of bees, rabbits, pigs, &. &c. Rules for cultivating a Garden, and numerous useful miscellaneous receipts. By a Lady, authoress of "Cottage Comforts". London, Virtue, [c. 1827].
NUTT, Frederick. THE COMPLETE CONFECTIONER; or, the whole Art of Confectionary Made Easy: also Receipts for home-made Wines, Cordials, French and Italian Liqueurs, &c. Eighth Edition, corrected and improved By J. J. Machet. London, Samuel Leigh, 1819.

Bodley Wood Stove. In 1802 a patent for a closed-top, cast-iron range was issued. The inventor was George Bodley. Joe Nidd remembers delivering one to The Angel, Market Harborough, for Staplewood.

Fox and Geese Board Game
The Tafl Family of Games
History
Games of the Tafl family are distinguished by the unequal size of the opposing forces. The objective is usually for the force of fewer numbers to take all the members of the larger forces whose aim is generally to stop them doing so.
Fox and Geese is a descendant of Tafl played on a cross shaped board. The first probable reference to an ancestor of the game is that of Hala-Tafl, the Fox Game which is mentioned in the Icelandic saga 'Grettis' which is believed to have been written after AD 1300 by a priest living in the North of the country.
The next probable reference is in the accounts of the Royal Household of Edward IV of England (AD 1461-1483) for the purchase of two foxes and twenty-six hounds of silver over-gilt for two sets of Marelles. Finally, it has been suggested that a game called Freystafl which is mentioned in the later Iceland sagas might be one and the same as Fox and Geese.
Photo and information on board games gleaned from The Online Guide to Traditional Board Games, by James Masters.
Coaching Inns and Parish Churches
Cousin Kate