Up and Down Stairs - Jeremy Musson [155]
He first reported to ‘the clerk of works, known as “Cappy” Hepple – as in flat cap, I think. I remember that I thought he was incredibly old then, but I was only fifteen. He was then probably the age I am now and he retired soon after I joined. After that, Ian August became clerk of works. We still have a maintenance department of joiners, painters and builders, but no plumbers or electricians. We did once but not any more. When I first came the staff was not that big, about ten, but in the 1970s it went up to twenty-five.’
At that time the estate workers were renovating cottages:
The estate had a lot of them; most of north Northumberland belonged to the duke, with lots of little villages. In 1975 we started rewiring the castle, putting in the telephone as well as intruder and fire alarms. By then I was a joiner. I came to work up at the castle and just never left. Officially now I am the ‘maintenance liaison officer’, which means if there is a problem in the castle, or in any of the family’s houses, I have to go and inspect it, and assess whether our own works department can deal with it or not.
To the fifteen-year-old that he was then, the duke and duchess seemed:
very regal, and part of a much more formal life. Everything was run by a housekeeper, Mrs Richardson, who used to frighten the life out of me. She was next to God and what she said went. Oh, she was a demon. Nobody was allowed into the castle without her say-so. Even if you had come to do some work she had asked for, you would be met at the back door and sent along to her sitting room. Then you would have to state what your business was, what exactly you were going to do, and usually why you hadn’t done it sooner to boot.
She had a room lined with oak cupboards for the linen. Sometimes you would see the maids queuing up for fresh supplies. The cupboards are all gone now. She had a chaise longue in there and a coal fire. It was the duty of one of the maids to lay and light that fire every morning, and then Mrs Richardson would have her breakfast in front of it.
From my perspective, the butler was the duke’s butler, and the housekeeper was the duchess’s housekeeper, that’s how I remember it. The present duke and duchess don’t want the daily interference of a butler in the way that Duke Hugh’s butler used to run his bath in the morning and do everything. They naturally want more privacy. Today they have a household controller, but there are still eight daily ladies, just as in Duke Hugh’s time.
In the 1960s everyone knew who everyone was. Alnwick estate was more formal and intimidating in some ways but it was more of a family too. Most of the staff employed at that time had some connection with the estate. When I applied for my job, the farmer whom my father worked for knew the under-agent at Alnwick, who gave me a letter of introduction.
Duke Hugh used to hunt four days a week and as a result he knew every farmer and every shepherd. Each day he would go out around noon and look round the farms, perhaps because he wanted a hunt jump put right, and then he would call in at the farm. It drove the cook mad, because lunch was always planned for one o’clock. In the 1960s during Duke Hugh’s time the stables were hallowed ground. The stud groom was Fred Lister. I think he and Duke Hugh had grown up together and they were certainly good friends. Sometimes the duke would go to the stables and have a whisky with Fred.65
The servants’ quarters of