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Author: Pamela Sambrook
Publisher: Sutton Publishing
Published: 2002
Total Pages: 268
ISBN-13: 9780750929882
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis lavishly illustrated book goes behind the scenes of the pomp and splendor of the English country house to reveal what life was really like for those in domestic service.
Author: Robert Roberts
Publisher: M.E. Sharpe
Published: 1998
Total Pages: 248
ISBN-13: 9780765601148
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAn annotated introduction exploring the contemporary importance of the book "The House Servants Directory", the identity and character of the author, and its significance in American history.
Author: Pamela A Sambrook
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2002-05-13
Total Pages: 245
ISBN-13: 075249466X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKOne 19th century footman complained about the work involved in drawing more than 40 baths for his household, yet Lady Grenville felt no compunction in describing her footman as a "lazy flunkey". For centuries a large body of domestic servants was an often unappreciated foundation for the smooth running of a household. Today, the warrens of "domestic offices" intrigue visitors. This book makes sense of these and the social structures behind them. It describes the skills, equipment, cleaning methods and work organization of the housemaid, laundrymaid, footman, valet and hall-boy - the servants who spent their days polishing fine furniture, and washing brilliant chandeliers, but also sponging filthy riding habits, and washing babies' nappies. The author also looks at how servants spent their leisure time. One footman enjoyed rowing on the lake every morning before work, while others had to sit up late at night sewing their own work-dresses. Contemporary manuals, diaries, accounts and first hand recollections provide a vivid insight into what life was really like for those in domestic service. A wealth of photographs, engravings and panels illustrate the domestic workings of country houses, many now looked after by the National Trust. This is an absorbing book for social historians and visitors to country houses alike.
Author: Tessa Boase
Publisher: Aurum
Published: 2014-05-19
Total Pages: 436
ISBN-13: 1781312680
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWorking as a housekeeper was one of the most prestigious jobs a nineteenth and early twentieth century woman could want – and also one of the toughest. A far cry from the Downton Abbey fiction, the real life Mrs Hughes was up against capricious mistresses, low pay, no job security and gruelling physical labour. Until now, her story has never been told. The Housekeeper’s Tale reveals the personal sacrifices, bitter disputes and driving ambition that shaped these women’s careers. Delving into secret diaries, unpublished letters and the neglected service archives of our stately homes, Tessa Boase tells the extraordinary stories of five working women who ran some of Britain’s most prominent households. There is Dorothy Doar, Regency housekeeper for the obscenely wealthy 1st Duke and Duchess of Sutherland at Trentham Hall, Staffordshire. There is Sarah Wells, a deaf and elderly Victorian in charge of Uppark, West Sussex. Ellen Penketh is Edwardian cook-housekeeper at the sociable but impecunious Erddig Hall in the Welsh borders. Hannah Mackenzie runs Wrest Park in Bedfordshire – Britain’s first country-house war hospital, bankrolled by playwright J. M. Barrie. And there is Grace Higgens, cook-housekeeper to the Bloomsbury set at Charleston farmhouse in East Sussex for half a century – an era defined by the Second World War. Revelatory, gripping and unexpectedly poignant, The Housekeeper’s Tale champions the invisible women who ran the English country house. Normal0falsefalsefalseEN-GBX-NONEX-NONE
Author: John Trevor Cliffe
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 1999-01-01
Total Pages: 254
ISBN-13: 9780300076431
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis engaging and beautifully illustrated book takes us back to the domestic world of the landed gentry in seventeenth-century England. Relating countless stories and case histories drawn from a wide range of primary sources, the book describes the physical environment, staffing, and functioning of gentry households, the inhabitants and their activities, and the role of these houses in the social and economic life of their localities. J. T. Cliffe begins by exploring the exterior and interior of houses and the outbuildings, parks, and gardens that surrounded them. He then investigates the people who lived in the country houses and the relationships between them. He provides colorful details about the responsibilities of the squire and his wife; the duties, remuneration, food, clothing, accommodation, and treatment of servants; and the special duties of estate stewards, coachmen, chaplains, and tutors. Cliffe explains various aspects of housekeeping, such as the tradition of hospitality and the factors militating against it. He also discusses other kinds of activity: religious practices; outdoor sports and indoor pastimes, including music and billiards; and such intellectual pursuits as antiquarian research, poetry, and scientific experiments. He concludes with a fascinating survey of scandal in the world of the gentry, telling of domestic strife, financial disaster, lunacy, and other disasters that marred this idyllic existence.
Author: Jon Stobart
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2016-05-20
Total Pages: 317
ISBN-13: 0191039691
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis study explores the consumption practices of the landed aristocracy of Georgian England. Focussing on three families and drawing on detailed analysis of account books, receipted bills, household inventories, diaries and correspondence, Consumption and the Country House charts the spending patterns of this elite group during the so-called consumer revolution of the eighteenth century. Generally examined through the lens of middling families, homes and motivations, this book explores the ways in which the aristocracy were engaged in this wider transformation of English society. Analysis centres on the goods that the aristocracy purchased, both luxurious and mundane; the extent to which they pursued fashionable modes and goods; the role that family and friends played in shaping notions of taste; the influence of gender on taste and refinement; the geographical reach of provisioning and the networks that lay behind this consumer activity, and the way this all contributed to the construction of the country house. The country house thus emerges as much more than a repository of luxury and splendour; it lay at the heart of complex networks of exchange, sociability, demand, and supply. Exploring these processes and relationships serves to reanimate the country house, making it an active site of consumption rather than simply an expression of power and taste, and drawing it into the mainstream of consumption histories. At the same time, the landed aristocracy are shown to be rounded consumers, driven by values of thrift and restraint as much as extravagant desires, and valuing the old as well as the new, not least as markers of their pedigree and heritance.
Author: Pamela Sambrook
Publisher: A&C Black
Published: 1996-07-01
Total Pages: 333
ISBN-13: 0826437532
DOWNLOAD EBOOKUntil the 18th century or even later, beer was the staple drink of most men and women at all levels of society. Tea and coffee were expensive luxuries while water might well carry disease. To supply the needs of both owners and servants, every country house with an accessible source of water had a brewhouse, usually close at hand. Although many of the brewhouses still stand, in some cases with the original brewing vessels (as at Lacock and Charlecote), their habitual conversion to other uses has allowed them to be ignored. Yet they are distinctive buildings - as much part of a country house as an ice-house or stables - which need both to be recognized and preserved. The scale of brewing in country houses, which went on to a surprisingly late date in the 19th century (with odd survivals, such as Hickleton in Yorkshire, in the 20th), was often considerable, if small besides that of commercial brewing. Copious records for both brewing and consumption exist. Pamela Sambrook describes the brewing equipment, such as coppers, mash tuns, underbacks and coolers; the types of beers brewed, from strong ale to small beer, and how they were kept; and the brewers themselves, their skills and attitudes. English Country House Brewing, 1500-1900 shows the role beer played in the life of the country house, with beer allowances and beer money an integral part of servants' rewards. Generous allowances were made for arduous tasks, such as harvesting. For celebrations, such as the heir's coming of age, extra-strong ale was provided. This book, which is heavily illustrated, is an important and original contribution to architectural, brewing and social history.
Author: Jon Stobart
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2021-09-21
Total Pages: 281
ISBN-13: 1000438740
DOWNLOAD EBOOKCountry houses were grand statements of power and status, but they were also places where people lived. This book traces the changes in layout, the new technologies, and the innovations in furniture that made them more convenient and comfortable. It argues that these material changes were just one aspect of comfort in the country house: feeling comfortable was just as important as being comfortable. Achieving this involved the comfort and solace to be found in daily routines, religious faith and, above all, relationships with family and friends. Such emotional comforts, and the attachment to things and places that embodied and memorialized them, made country houses into homes.
Author: Pamela A Sambrook
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2005-07-21
Total Pages: 155
ISBN-13: 0752494686
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn 1851 there were over a million servants in Britain. This book reveals first-hand tales of put-upon servants, who often had to rise hours before dawn to lay fires, heat water and prepare meals for their employers, and then work into the small hours. Yet there are also heart-warming stories of personal devotion, and reward, and of how the servants enjoyed themselves in their time off. There are moments of great poignancy as well as hilarity: a steward's dawning realisation that the housekeeper he befriended is a thief; a young footman chasing a melon as it rolls through a castle's corridors into the moat; the smart manservant weeping at the station as he bids farewell to his mother. This was an era when footmen were paid extra for being six foot or over, and female servants had to wear black bonnets to church. Drawing on letters, diaries, and autobiographies "Keeping Their Place" provides a vivid insight into the day-by-day lives of country house servants between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries.
Author: Stephen G. Hague
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2021-09-16
Total Pages: 378
ISBN-13: 1000449386
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe eighteenth-century home, in terms of its structure, design, function, and furnishing, was a site of transformation – of spaces, identities, and practices. Home has myriad meanings, and although the eighteenth century in the common imagination is often associated with taking tea on polished mahogany tables, a far wider world of experience remains to be introduced. At Home in the Eighteenth Century brings together factual and fictive texts and spaces to explore aspects of the typical Georgian home that we think we know from Jane Austen novels and extant country houses while also engaging with uncharacteristic and underappreciated aspects of the home. At the core of the volume is the claim that exploring eighteenth-century domesticity from a range of disciplinary vantage points can yield original and interesting questions, as well as reveal new answers. Contributions from the fields of literature, history, archaeology, art history, heritage studies, and material culture brings the home more sharply into focus. In this way At Home in the Eighteenth Century reveals a more nuanced and fluid concept of the eighteenth-century home and becomes a steppingstone to greater understanding of domestic space for undergraduate level and beyond.
