Worldly possessions

Alan Crosby discovers the extravagant items that once adorned the home of a wealthy family in the 19th century

Alate-Victorian inventory of the contents of a country house in the East Midlands revealed to me a great deal about the ‘Upstairs Downstairs’ world which has over the last 40 years become so popular as a historical theme on our screens. The house (now in the process of conversion to luxury apartments) was where an aristocratic family, whose main estates were far away, went for the hunting season.

Hunting was a central element in the calendar of the aristocracy and gentry, and this family liked the sporting life so much that eventually they lived most of the year there, rarely venturing north to their ancestral home, but making use of the railways to visit their London house for grand social events.

The inventory is amazing – over 350 handwritten pages listing every item in the house – all the books, every stick of furniture, a vast array of copper pans and dishes in the kitchen. It itemises the entire stock of flowering plants, trees and soft fruit and vegetables in the gardens, orchard, greenhouses and frames, and it even includes all the equipment belonging to the private gasworks set a suitable distance from the house. I don’t think even Downton Abbey had a gasworks – or at least we never saw it!

Some things are conspicuously absent. Although there were over 20 bedrooms, I noted only two bathrooms and two WCs, though there were quite a few chamberpots. Even the upper ranks of Victorian society were less clean than we are today, and going to the loo was potentially problematic (especially for ladies, with their tightly laced, flounced and frilled costumes).

But the inventory, and a few surviving photos of the main rooms, make it clear that the place was crammed with stuff. There were innumerable knick-knacks and ornaments, birds or wax flowers under glass domes, dozens of photographs in silver frames, hundreds of prints, pictures and engravings on the walls (mostly hunting scenes, pictures of dogs and horses, or portraits of family members squeezed into hunting or riding habits).

It must have been oppressive – the curtains were edged with fringes and the rugs likewise, cushions were braided and the furniture was inlaid, gilded and carved. Nothing was simple – just reading the descriptions made me feel claustrophobic. But I turned a page and discovered that some of the house was minimalist in its furnishings.

Going up the main staircase we would have seen nothing of this, but there was a back stair, hidden from family members and visitors. Proceeding up from the servants’ hall passage, we’d climb past the first floor (location of the main family bedrooms) and the second floor (lesser bedrooms for minor guests) and finally reach the third floor. There, under the heading “Servants’ attics”, the inventory describes a series of rooms each containing an iron bedstead, a mattress and basic bedding, a chest of drawers, a washstand with ewer and jug, a rug on the wooden boards of the floor, and plain curtains. No frills, no ornaments, no luxury – not even a fireplace in some of them.

In my mind’s eye came a picture of those servants’ rooms now on display in stately homes. Visitors easily become wearied by walls covered in grand paintings. We are exhausted by opulent furniture, heavy ornaments, acres of Chinese wallpaper, and yards of decorative carpet. When we reach the bare boards and thin mattresses of the scullery maid’s room we squeak with delight – we can identify with them more easily.

Our family history is quite likely to reveal a domestic servant, maybe one in ‘the big house’. Life for them could be harsh with long hours, strict discipline, pitiful wages and hard manual labour. But at least when they went to bed no stuffed birds under glass domes gazed at them in the candlelight!

Over 350 handwritten pages listing every item in the house