Servants’ bedrooms and dormitories were pushed to the margins of the house: in garrets and occasionally basements. In newly built or extended houses, wings were created in the main house that offered separate accommodation for indoor and outdoor servants, grooms for example often sleeping above the stables.

2017年12月14日 · A typical servant’s bedroom (Merchants House Museum, New York) ‘Followers’, as servants’ sweethearts were called, were seen as a nuisance and discouraged. In Victorian times, romance and marriage between servants in the same house was rare – it was considered disruptive to work – but it became more common in the Edwardian era when ...

2011年1月29日 · Each film follows the servants and takes the viewer up and down back stairways, into kitchens and butler’s pantries, and stables and courtyards. But how were the servants’ quarters laid out, and where were they placed in relation to the public and private rooms that the family used?

Servants' quarters, also known as staff's quarters, are those parts of a building, traditionally in a private house, which contain the domestic offices and staff accommodation. From the late 17th century until the early 20th century, they were a common feature in many large houses.

2011年1月5日 · With or without guests, the daily routine for a family at its country house was unalterable, due in part to the servants, whose meal-times were rigid, and in part to Edwadian era tradition. At nine 0’clock, housemaids and valets arrived to draw bedroom curtains and deliver a cup of teac as ordered by the hostess the night before.”

2011年12月30日 · Eaton Hall eventually numbered around 150 bedrooms ranging from those for the honoured guests down to the lowliest servants who would share dormitories.

2014年10月27日 · Adjoining the housekeeper’s bedroom is a bath-room for her individual use, with embroidered towels and all the dainty toilet accessories that are so enjoyed by the woman of refinement. At a completely equipped desk in her sitting-room she spends certain hours each day, sometimes writing twenty-five or thirty checks at a time.

Beds held central importance amongst household furniture in German houses, both for the family and for their servants. They were not only places of rest and privacy but also conveyed messages of status and relations within the country house.

Before the late 17th century, servants dined, slept and worked in the main part of the house, sleeping wherever space was available such as in the kitchen or in cupboards under the stairs. Only the very grandest houses had distinct areas and much later in the 18th centuries, servants’ quarters were purpose built.

This network brings together heritage professionals and researchers from a range of disciplines and countries to explore the lives of servants in country houses across Europe. Servants were central to the functioning of the country house and the lifestyle of the landed elite; yet we know comparatively about how their lives, especially beyond ...