Up and Down Stairs - Jeremy Musson [113]
No Servant is to receive any Visitor, Friend or Relative into the house except by written order from the Housekeeper, which must be dated, and will be preserved by the Porter and shown with his monthly accounts; nor to introduce any person into the Servants’ Hall, without the consent of the Porter. No Tradesmen, nor any other persons having business in the house, are to be admitted except between the hours of 9 am and 3 pm, and in all cases the Porter must be satisfied that the person he admits has business there. The Hall door is to be finally closed at Half past Ten o’clock every night, after which time no person will be admitted into the house except those on special leave . . .94
This focus on regulation of servants’ lives was also expressed in architecture, with some landowners continually updating their service quaters. The servants’ hall was central to the working areas and staff accommodation at the back of the house, all of which continued throughout the century to be subject to adjustments of architectural thinking. One typical example of early-nineteenth-century planning is Dalmeny in Scotland, designed in 1819 by William Wilkins in a neo-Tudor style, and resembling the famous Norfolk manor house at East Barsham. According to J.P. Neale in Views of Seats of Noblemen and Gentlemen (1825), this comfortable, picturesque house was ‘calculated more for comfort and convenience than show’.
Dalmeny is divided into essentially three ranges, with the private family apartments at one end; the main reception rooms, library, drawing room and dining room in the main portion; and the service rooms and double-height kitchen in the corresponding wing. The pivot of the service wing is the butler’s pantry and plate store with the butler’s bedroom beside it, a common security measure. After that came the steward’s office, a small sitting room for female servants and the housekeeper’s room, leading to the still room and kitchen, with sleeping accommodation, possibly in dormitories, above. Beyond that were further household offices and the laundry with its own walled drying yard.95
For ease of access, the countess’s lady’s maid had sleeping quarters in the family wing – so she could be on call – while the nursery wing was always above the butler’s pantry. In one large bedroom in the tower, which is thought to have been used for visiting ladies’ maids because it gave easy access to the bedrooms just below it on the first floor, there is evidence that it was once separated into private areas by hanging curtains, as in a modern hospital.96
Even in country houses on a grander scale, it was common in the nineteenth century to add or remodel sizeable areas of service accommodation. When the 6th Duke of Devonshire (1790–1858), the only son of the famous Georgiana, inherited Chatsworth in 1811, he employed Sir Jeffry Wyatville to extend the house to the north with an extensive new wing, incorporating a grand dining room. At the same time Wyatville substantially remodelled the servants’ accommodation.
Unusually, the duke himself wrote what was effectively a guidebook, Handbook of Chatsworth and Hardwick, privately printed in 1845, telling the story of the house in his own words. Under ‘The Offices’, he remarked that the East Lobby ‘used to be the servants’ hall, and a very bad one: it is now used chiefly as a passage in which you must be skilful to avoid falling over all those trunks’.97
On the left hand were
the Housekeepers’ private apartments, consisting of three rooms that were the tea-room and the footmen’s rooms. The sitting-room is very good, though not quite so much so as a friend thought, when he said to me, ‘You know your mother had not such a room as this.’ It is, however, convenient and light, and overlooks all arrivals; . . . Next to these, towards the North, comes the servants’ hall, a beautiful example of Sir Jeffry’s stone-work, arched, as the