Servants' quarters
This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. (December 2014) |
The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with England and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. (December 2010) |
Servants' quarters are those parts of a building, traditionally in a private house, which contain the
Origins
Before the late 17th century, servants dined, slept and worked in the main part of the house with their employers, sleeping wherever space was available. The principal reception room of a house—often known as the
Roger Pratt is the architect credited with pioneering the removal of servants from dining in the great hall.[2] In 1650 at Coleshill House Pratt designed the first purpose-built servants' hall in the basement. By the end of the century, the arrangement was common; the only servants left in the hall were those waiting for a summons.
By the late 17th century, the idea of giving servants their own designated areas had been adopted not only in the houses of the aristocracy, as at Coleshill, but also in those of the gentry such as Belton House. This improved privacy and kept cooking smells, noise, and any other indelicacies of the lower classes away from their more cultivated employers, thus allowing the great hall and its adjoining rooms to be more tastefully decorated and specifically employed.
It was essential that servants were close at hand, so they were given their own specific floors, usually the lowest and the highest. These floors were often, as at Belton, distinguished by a different fenestration from the rooms of the employers in between. Hence at Belton can be seen the small windows of the semi-basement containing the kitchens, pantries and servants' dining halls. Above are the large windows lighting the principal rooms, while right at the top of the house are again the small windows of the servants’ bedrooms. These rooms which were entirely in main block of the house, and constituted distinct servants' quarters, were to be the forerunner of the service wing.
While Belton was being completed, a change was taking place in architecture with more classical genres of the continental Baroque being introduced.
The new Baroque fashion, and that of Palladianism which quickly followed it, swept away the double pile concept of one compact block with sets of rooms back to back as at Belton in favour of houses having at their centre a grand corps de logis flanked by long wings or pavilions, which in Palladio's original conception had been the mere farm buildings of what were small country villas. These wings became adapted in design to house the staff, and other secondary rooms.
A second distinguishing feature of this new era was that flat lead roofs often replaced the former attics where the servants had slept. This lack of space was compensated in the new houses by the entire ground floor being given over to servants. This floor, usually built of rusticated stone, was beneath the larger and grander piano nobile occupied by the employers. Ornate external staircases were built to the front door which was now clearly on the first floor. The nobility now had minimal contact with those living downstairs.
The 18th century servant
It was not uncommon for the service wings to be the same size as the main part of the house which they served, or even larger than it. At the Baroque Castle Howard and its slightly younger relation Blenheim Palace completed in 1722, the service wings are of monumental proportions, intended to be highly visible, enhancing the appearance of both the size and prestige of the mansion. In smaller houses the flanking wings could take the form of symmetrical pavilions linked to the corps de logis by open or closed colonnades. Each pavilion was a self-contained unit for a designated purpose as at both Holkham Hall and Kedleston, where one pavilion housed the kitchens and staff, and another the private family rooms. These servants wings could be fairly small compared to the overall size of the house, as the servants had at their disposal, in addition to their own wing, the ground floor of the entire building. The kitchen and its attendant odours, however, were always confined to a more remote wing.
While life upstairs away from the servants became more relaxed with less ceremony, life downstairs became a parody of the former world upstairs. Butlers, housekeepers and cooks now became monarchs in their own small kingdoms. A strict hierarchy among the servants developed which persisted in the grander households until the 20th century. The upper servants in large households often withdrew from the servants' hall to eat their dessert courses in the privacy of a steward's room in much the same way the owners of the house had withdrawn to a solar from the Great Hall in the previous era. Strict orders of precedence and deference evolved which became sacrosanct.
During the 18th century, the only way of summoning a servant was by calling, or a handbell. This meant a servant had to remain on duty within earshot at all times (straight-backed uncomfortable hall chairs designed to keep servants awake date from this period). However, the early 19th century invention of the bell pull, a complicated system of wires and chains within ceiling and wall cavities, meant a servant could be summoned from a greater distance, and therefore also kept at a greater distance. From this time on it became fashionable for servants to be as near to invisible as possible, which fitted exactly with the next change in architectural and aesthetic fashions.
These new fashions made sweeping changes to the life of the servant. From the 1760s Palladianism was slowly superseded by
Idyllic and pleasant as this concept was for those living upstairs, it was bad news for the servants, as the first and most obvious solution was to bury them. Nowhere is this more evident than at Castle Coole in Northern Ireland. The entire servant's quarters were put underground into cellars, lit only by windows at the bottom of grated pits. The only means of approach was through a single tunnel, the entrance of which was concealed by the brow of a landscaped hill some distance from the house.[4]
In the absence of electric or
in London.However, in the country where there was more space, the more practical solution was to build a specific wing onto the house for the staff, and as it was often
The invisible servant
The fashion for disguising the service wings led to feats of architectural engineering. In the country, where space was more available, the wings were hidden behind screens of trees, shrubs and grassy banks as at Waddesdon Manor and Mentmore Towers. While the rooms within were light and airy, the wings were often designed to have windows facing away from the principal areas of the house and its gardens. In towns where space was limited the servants fared less well, with their daytime, and sometimes sleeping, quarters in the basement.
In both town and country, means of access between the main house and the servant's wings were kept to a minimum, often the single door was lined with green baize to deaden any sound. Long and complicated passages linking kitchens with dining rooms were devised; in some houses the tortuous route through corridors and staircases from kitchen to dining room could be an eighth of a mile – an absence of cooking smells taking priority over hot food. Even the doors linking to the connecting corridors were covered by screens, sometimes disguised as bookcases with dummy books, or just simply covered in the same wallpaper as that with which the room was decorated, as the existence of servants was not to be acknowledged. Cleaning had to be performed in the early hours of the morning while the employers were asleep, and in the grander houses only male servants were allowed to be visible, and then only when required.
In some large houses from the beginning of the 19th century, enormous and ingenious efforts of building and design were employed to keep the staff out of sight. The service wings were often only accessed by tunnels as at Rockingham house and Castle Coole, both, in Ireland. At Mentmore Towers, where the service wing is a large block the same size as the mansion itself, the main part of the house is built on artificially raised ground allowing it to tower over the service wings which are in reality of a near similar height. The only windows to Mentmore's service wings were to an inner courtyard, thus preventing the servant's looking out on their employers, or their employers catching accidental sight of them. The outer, but blind, walls of the wings are of attractive dressed Ancaster stone adorned with niches and statuary, while the inner courtyard visible only to the servants is of common yellow brick. However the majority of the wing is hidden by dense planting.
The
King
The 20th century
While staff accommodation continues to be built for hotels and similar buildings, in domestic use it has declined along with the numbers of staff kept. This major decline began in Europe following
See also
Notes
References
- ISBN 0-300-02273-5.
- Jackson-Stops, Gervase (1990). The Country House in Perspective. Pavilion Books Ltd. ISBN 0-8021-1228-5.