Up and Down Stairs - Jeremy Musson [119]
In the early nineteenth century, lamp rooms were common, as the cleaning and refuelling of lamps required considerably more space than replacing candles in candlesticks. However, after the 1890s, the lamp room was gradually superseded by a switch room or generating room providing electricity, with Cragside in Northumberland being one of the first to have electric light throughout. Before the 1870s, new houses always had their own brewhouse, although after this point they were rarer.135
Servants’ sleeping quarters naturally varied depending on the age and scale of the house. During the nineteenth century, there was an increasing emphasis on separating them from those of the family, whereas up until the eighteenth century close personal servants often slept close to their employers, to be on call. From the mid nineteenth century, the pattern was to remove servants as far as possible from the principal bedroom floor.
For largely moral reasons, as well as practical – in order to avoid unwanted pregnancies – the separation of menservants and female servants was taken increasingly seriously. In the nineteenth century the maids often lived in attics, often accessed only by walking past the housekeeper’s bedroom, while the men occupied basement rooms or rooms over the other offices.136
Up until the 1840s, menservants often slept in dormitory accommodation, sometimes called the ‘barracks’. Later on, senior menservants usually had a single room each, whilst their juniors shared. Housemaids and kitchenmaids would also be expected to share, in twos or fours, while the housekeeper, cook and lady’s maid would expect a room of their own, as would the head housemaid and head kitchenmaid.137
Some of the best-preserved service quarters laid out in the last half of the century can be found at Lanhydrock in Cornwall. After a fire, it was rebuilt for Lord Robartes by Richard Coad, who had worked on an earlier remodelling of the house. The attention given to the service areas and accommodation reflects the preoccupations discussed in Kerr’s book, adapted to the needs of an older house.
The plans illustrate perfectly the multiplicity of service rooms that exemplified the High Victorian country house. In the centre of the south range on the ground floor were the butler’s sitting room, bedroom and pantry with a strong room, which had a safe for the plate (silver) and the pantry boy by the door for security. The housekeeper’s quarters were near by, on the other side of the pantry court, with the maids’ sitting room adjoining. As usual, the still room was beside the housekeeper’s room and the substantial servants’ hall completed the courtyard.138
Beyond the servants’ hall, to the west, were the lamp room and gun room, wine and beer cellars. The huge kitchen ‘was built like a college hall with great wooden roof trusses supporting a high roof over.139 It lay close, but not adjacent, to the dining room. A series of associated rooms were close at hand, with a large scullery to one side, plus a bakehouse, dry larder, fish larder, meat larder, dairy scullery and dairy, which had its own external access. Between the kitchen and the dining hall were a servery and a china closet. The male and female servants’ bedrooms were approached via different staircases. The nursery accommodation for the Robarteses’ large family was arranged above the servants’ hall, still room and housekeeper’s rooms.140
These areas survived remarkably unaltered and are much cherished. Today they are presented convincingly by the National Trust, which was given the house by the 7th Lord Clifden, who continued to live there until 1966. He would little have imagined the interest that the service quarters would ignite in modern visitors.