victorian house design

[sm_jamieson]

I've always be interested in house design, and the way it relates to usage etc. I watched a craft program with Kirsty Allsop, which feature a 6 bedroom detached victorian house in willenhall near walsall, Birmingham. A few things interested me about it. The design was a long hall from front to back, and the stairwell was off to the right of the hall between front and back rooms, with stairs up to doorway height, then doubling back after a half landing. There was a mini-hallway under the upper flight beyond the half-landing, with a window at the end. You didn't see much of the house, but it seemed to be 4 square rooms downstairs. The back room on the right did not have an entrance from the main hall, but only from the mini- hallway, so that it was tucked out of the way, and opposite an under- stairs cupboard or possibly stairs down to a cellar. All other rooms led off the hallway. I wondered if this back room was originally a servants room or scullery etc, and thus the entrance was tucked out of the way. The house also had servants bells, but did not show where in the house these were. Anyone know if my reasoning for the back room design is likely ? Simon.

[Andrew Mawson]

stairs

under-

Highly probable. My last house, a 7 bed detached Edwardian was much as you describe. The tucked away access from the hall beside the stairs led to a 'suite' of rooms - comprising a small kitchen (9 foot square) that had had a 'copper' in one corner, a larger room (14 foot square) with a fireplace that looked to have had a range cooker, a toilet, all joined by a corridor leading to the back door (tradesmens entrance). On the third floor was the servants bedroom, which was a decent size - perhaps 14' x 12' with a superb view over London.

AWEM

[docholliday]

My street consists of mainly 4/5 bedroom houses with small front gardens on one side, slightly smaller houses with no front garden on the other side. The 1891 census (just after the street was built - a few houses were still not occupied) shows that almost all houses had a servant living in; one house with a slightly larger frontage than the rest had both a general servant and a housekeeper. That one was occupied by a solicitor... Most of these have two main rooms on the groud floor, with sliding doors between, and a corridor down one side leading to the back extension, which would appear to have had the kitchen and scullery on the ground floor; the main room at the rear had a back door leading into the garden through a small conservatory, presumably so the family could get into the garden without going through the servants quarters. I assume the servant would have slept in the small room at the top of the house with just a small roof light

[sm_jamieson]

Well I'll hide my envy (sorry, aspiration ;-) We had a family friend years ago who had a house like this, but it also had a parallel staircase under the main staircase that went up to the servants rooms, so they really could hide away. The servants room was at a funny level, sort of intermediate between two floors ! I assume in your house, they would have had to descend from the attic rooms to the servants suite in the mornings - before anyone else got up.

If I was ever in a position to build a new house, I would be strongly inclined to put in some of these types of interesting features, even in a fairly modest house. Not sure at all about the open plan boxes they build on grand designs etc.

Simon.

[RobertL]

In our Victorian house you can tell where the servants lived and worked because those rooms have smaller and less ornate skirting boards and the servants' sides of the doors have no mouldings and less fancy architraves.

You can also check the old censuses to see how many servants there were.

Robert

[sm_jamieson]

I wonder what the rate of pay was, and if the "help" was treated as dogsbodies or respected to some degree. Watching Downton Abbey, I don't know if its a true reflection of the times, but the Lord of the Manor regards part of his duty as employing servants. It seems lazy, but at least all the staff are being given employment and free accommodation. Its bizarre that in some of those big houses, the staff often outnumbered the main residents considerably ! I think the Queen Mother had a huge staff like this until she died. Simon.

[The Natural Philosopher]

That would depend on the employer. I've seen attitudes ranging from 'part of our family' to 'filthy kaffr girl' in S Africa, where this situation is still extant.

Its very true

In S Africa, employing staff is/was a way to both get them off the streets and also to get them on the first rung of westernisation. When you have people who have never been exposed to any household appliances whatsoever, its a steep learning curve.

In India, a friend of mine who left there many years ago bemoans the fact that he is incapable of doing anything for himself "Our caste was brought up to employ as many people as possible: There is no social state, so the lower castes depended on us for enough to stay alive.To do something for yourself that you could have employed someone else to do, was a selfishness that was not tolerated". You did not buy an electric fan, you employed a punkah wallah.

Prior to electricity and the IC engine, everything was manual in a house.

To prepare a house for the day involved getting up, lighting the fires, heating the water for early morning baths and showers, laying out the correct clothes, cooking breakfast and making tea - all this in solid fuel ranges..

Then drawing all the thick insulating curtains, cleaning up anything and everything not in pristine state. All that before the owners even woke.

If you don't believe half a dozen people cant make work or 10 servants when they don't do ANYTHING for themselves, think again.

Full time gardener and handyman, as well..

[Owain]

Some senior servants, in particular, could amass quite sizeable savings. If they didn't take their full wages in cash every month (they wouldn't have had bank accounts) then the estate held their wages for them and paid them interest on the amount, in effect a loan to their employer.

When Mr. Hudson and Mrs. Bridges married they were able to take over a guest house, other servants would have bought pubs or shops.

Owain

[Ericp]

Servants had to be immediately to hand but totally out of sight, so your reasoning is probably correct.

[geoff]

In message , Ericp writes

Ah memories ...

I used to have a servant

I had fermented some really mean pineapple and mango wine. I decanted it into a 20l water cooler bottle. I sealed it up to let it settle out. Unfortunately, the fermentation got a second wind and, at 3am, I thought a bomb had gone off - it exploded

"KAS !"

Out she came and dutifully cleaned it all up while I went back to bed

Aah - that was the life

[chrisj.doran]

In some cases the servants' "stairs" were just a ladder going up vertically through a hole in the floor. There are vestiges of these in one-time almshouses around here -- yes, even they had servants!

I used to work in a place which had started out as a country house and was subsequently converted into offices and labs. There was, indeed, a warren of tiny mezzanine rooms in the former servants' quarters. One room had a half-height ceiling part of the way giving the room above a bit more floor space. Presumably you put your bed under that, but we had filing cabinets. We found a bricked-up room in the cellars, but never investigated. The most wonderful thing was the original loo mounted on a little platform -- you could see how it got called the "throne". The story was told that the posh lady who last lived there being shown round once. She refused to go up the servants' stairs -- it just wasn't done.

Chris

[Peter Johnson]

A few years ago I did a delivery to a Victorian businessman's mansion on the edge of Leicester, owned by the NHS for years, there's a hospital in the grounds now. A young Asian woman showed me where the delivery was to be made, up the big stairs two or three floors, then through a hidden door in the panelling and a flight of narrow stairs to rooms in the attic. Opening the hidden door, she commented that the place was like a rabbit warren and was quite surprised when I told her that we were passing into the servants' quarters.

[chris French]

In message , Peter Johnson writes

We visited Burghley house near Stamford the other day.

The house was originally built in the mid/late 1500's, when they didn't mind servants going from roon to room.

In Victorian times they put a servants corridor in round much of the house (basically the house is a sequence of rooms built round a courtyard, so it was easy enough to built the corridor inside this). You could see all the hidden doors etc. wall papered over and such like

[chris French]

According to info I have here, Mrs Beetton (about 1860) gives figures of about 5-10 pounds a year for a Scullery Maid or Stable boy, upto 25 -

50 pounds a year for the cook or Butler