Up and Down Stairs - Jeremy Musson [118]
The housekeeper’s room was also key, as we have seen, for the administration of the house, as well as the upper servants’ sitting and dining room (where there was not a steward’s room). J.C. Loudon decreed in 1833 that it should be ‘a spacious comfortable apartment, furnished as a respectable parlour, and situated so that the other offices are easily overlooked [with] all that is necessary for use and comfort in a rather plain way’. Some, such as that recorded in a watercolour at Aynhoe in Oxfordshire, seem very comfortable.128
Kerr was specific about minute aspects: ‘The Fittings, besides the ordinary furniture of a plain Sitting-room, will consist of spacious cupboards or presses, from 18 to 24 inches, filled with drawers and shelving, for the accommodation of preserves, pickles, fancy groceries of all kinds, cakes, china, glass, linen, and so forth.’129
Related to the housekeeper’s room was the still room, where tea and coffee were prepared, and preserves, cakes and biscuits made. J.C. Loudon described his ideal still room in some detail, suggesting its importance:
It should be furnished as a better kind of kitchen, containing a fireplace, with a boiler, a small oven, a range of charcoal-stoves, with a cover; a small shut-up sink, with a water-pipe for a supply of water . . . [There should also be] A range of small closets for the maids, to keep their tea things, tea and sugar, and things used at the housekeeper’s table . . . a small looking glass might promote tidiness of person and a piece of common carpet would add to the comfort of the room. The chairs and stools should be neat and substantial, and a small case of well-chosen books should hang against the wall.130
In the very grandest houses, Kerr wrote: ‘a house-steward is employed as the chief officer of all, assisted perhaps by a kitchen-clerk.’ This individual would have an office and a steward’s room, which was usually ‘a Dining-room for the upper servants, and incidentally a common room for them during the day, and a sitting-room for them in the evening’ – effectively an upper servants’ hall. He added, ‘an incidental purpose of the Steward’s-room is to receive visitors of the rank of the upper servants, and superior tradesman-people and others coming on business.’131 Furthermore, ‘there ought to be a comfortable fireside, and a prospect which shall be at least not disagreeable; the outlook however ought not to be towards the walks of the family.’132
Often overlooked today, the housemaid’s closet was the principal store for the brooms, dusters, pails and brushes used to clean the house. J.C. Loudon wrote in 1846 that it should be
light and roomy with a plaster floor, with an inner closet for the bedroom night lights, or rush light cases etc, with drawers underneath for cloths and dusters. There should be pegs and shelves, on which to put anything out of the way . . .
As warm water is very much used by the housemaid, their closet, in a large house, should contain a small copper, for heating water, and, if possible, it should be supplied with water by a leaden pipe, [which] . . . would also be great convenience. In large establishments, the labour of carrying up and down the stairs clean and dirty water is very great, so that a pipe supplying soft water and a sink for [emptying] the slops is necessary in a place of this kind, which should also contain a large box in one corner, for a supply of coals to be used in the upper part of the house.’133
A brushing room, for the wet- and dry-brushing of hunting clothes, was frequently