Servants were a vital part of every country house. Our image of them is dominated by their work, based on the kitchens and other service rooms opened up in National Trust houses, and from period dramas such as Downton Abbey. Yet both provide a partial and sometimes distorted picture. We rarely consider the places where servants lived and slept, partly because these rooms are rarely open to visit.
Making room for servants
Servants often started their working lives as young children; they lived some distance away from their families and needed to be accommodated within the country house.
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.
Most servants would have had their own box. They carried this with them as they moved from one house to the next and used it to keep personal items. All other furniture was provided by their employer.
The hierarchies created by status within the household and signalled by differences in pay were also apparent in the accommodation and furniture provided to servants.
Maids and footmen
Servants at the bottom of the hierarchy were provided with the basics, but little else: a bed, a chair, perhaps a table, a small mirror or a piece of carpet. Mattresses were filled with wool or horsehair, or very occasionally straw; beds and pillows were usually stuffed with feathers, and all had the standard set of sheets and blankets. Many servants had to share their rooms and few had fires.
Housekeepers and stewards
Senior servants in larger households were much better off. Their rooms could resemble those of their employers, in part because they frequently contained unwanted furniture moved from family rooms.
Many had carpets, easy chairs, tea sets, and desks (their rooms were often places of work), and some had pictures on the walls and books on shelves. They invariably enjoyed a fire and a room to themselves.
Servants’ rooms today
All too often, servants’ bedrooms are inaccessible in historic houses today. Many have been converted into offices or are used for storage. Others – like those at Tatton Park and Upton House – remain off-limits other than on special tours.
Servants’ rooms and furniture at places in our care
Erddig, near Wrexham in Wales, was the seat of the Yorke family, who created a unique record of their servants in paintings, photographs and poems. This record is matched by extensive ranges of indoor service rooms and outdoor workshops showing the variety of work undertaken by the Yorke’s servants. You can visit a number of garret bedrooms, furnished as they would have been in the 19th century.
Little is known about the provenance and date of the simple iron-frame bed you can see at Erddig, but it is typical of the kind of metal frames provided for servants’ rooms throughout the 19th century. Iron frames were often favoured because they were more hygienic – wooden frames could harbour pests such as bed bugs.
At Lanhydrock in Cornwall, the Steward’s Room remains as it was in the late 19th century, and there are several servants’ bedrooms to explore, including those of maids and footmen originally accessible via separate staircases – a particular concern of Victorian houseowners. This pine desk was probably used by Silvanus Jenkin, who was the steward through the late 19th and early 20th century. Imagine him sitting at the desk, discussing business matters with the family’s tenant farmers.
Canons Ashby in Northamptonshire was the home of the Dryden family. A modest sized house, it employed just a handful of servants in the 19th century when Sir Edward Dryden was the owner. You can still see the rooms of three servants, presented as they were in the 19th century and clearly marking the different status of housekeeper and maids.
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This article was written by Jon Stobart, a historian at Manchester Metropolitan University specialising in various aspects of consumption, from shopping practices to the repurposing and resale of household goods. Jon’s recent research has explored what made country houses comfortable in a physical and emotional sense, including ideas of home and the provision made for servants.
Immerse yourself in history
Meet people from the centuries gone by, learn about the unique artworks in our care and understand more about historic traditions.
Find out more about our Trusted Source articles, which were created in partnership with the University of Oxford, and explore topics related to the special places in our care.
Why did the Yorkes remember their staff in pictures and poems? Discover a day in the servants’ lives at Erddig and learn why a housekeeper ended up in court.
Canons Ashby was home to the Dryden family for over 400 years and has a rich history. Discover how the house developed and about the people that made the house we see today.
Learn how innovations in country house communication technology, from sprung bells to early telephones, transformed the ways servants could be summoned.
