Up and Down Stairs

by Jeremy Musson

  One of Miss Rough’s colleagues, Laura Hurrel, who is in her twenties, was recently on the other side of the fence:

  I worked as a housekeeper for several families, travelling between London, country residences and abroad, including the owners of a traditional country estate. Things have certainly changed in terms of job titles and technology. There is less of an accepted structure. When I worked for the owners of a country house, I did so alongside the staff there, organising functions, and meeting and greeting.

  Those going into housekeeping now tend to come from a background like nannying, hotels or corporate hospitality, and there are a lot of couples whose children have grown up and left home. It requires a lot of practical skills and what is required can vary widely.

  What is it like working in another family’s home? ‘You do have to be careful not to get too involved in their lives, to know when not to listen and to leave people alone. You have to be aware of sensitivities and be discreet.’ It all sounds very familiar.82

  In recent times, ‘conservation cleaning’ has taken a higher profile in the work of the National Trust when caring for and presenting country houses to the public, whether they are still occupied by a family or not. It is recognisably work that was once undertaken by the historic hierarchies of housemaids, footmen and housekeepers. According to Helen Lloyd, the head housekeeper for the National Trust, serious research has been done into the traditional housekeeping methods of country-house servants to understand best practice.83

  ‘In earlier periods, the expensive furniture of the day was incredibly valuable so it was looked after just as the most expensive technology is cared for today: for instance, furniture was always supplied with case covers. The elaborate process of coaching household servants was for centuries predicated on a process of training, in which they would gradually assume responsibility for more and more precious objects. They really understood how to care for things, as we can see from the extraordinary range of brushes available for every possible purpose.’84

  The National Trust has evolved a formula for the care of houses, dictated by the size of house, the density of furnishings and the number of visitors: ‘It is the activity of people that makes dust, be it a private family or the visitors.’ The National Trust’s recent Manual of Housekeeping gives a detailed description of the preferred staffing levels needed to care for a house and its contents. There would normally be a house manager, with curatorial training or a qualification; a house steward, with direct responsibility for the people doing the physical work, as well as managing the opening up and closing of the house; and an assistant, to provide cover seven days a week.

  Then there are the ‘conservation assistants’: depending on the number of rooms and the density of furniture, anywhere between two and nine, but probably averaging around four. Most houses would also have various assistant cleaners who, although not specially trained, clean the offices and the other visitor facilities.85 It is all these people who make a critical difference in the care and presentation of beautiful objects and magnificent rooms. Whilst we admire their dedication today, we should also give full credit to those in centuries past whose working lives were spent in preserving and protecting these works of art and fine furnishings.

  However, the privately owned and family-occupied country house must concern itself with more than conservation, although it is certainly essential. Chatsworth, in Derbyshire, is no exception to modern trends. Many observers have praised the Dowager Duchess’s role in the heroic revival of this great palace, both as an admired visitor attraction and as a family home.86

  The funeral procession of the late duke on 11 May 2004 was attended by all those who worked in the house, garden, shops, restaurants and on the wider estate, dressed in the uniform of their roles, and was widely reported in the national and local press. It was an iconic image of the private country-house community, still going strong in the twenty-first century although of a kind more typical of the largest traditional estates, on which this book has focused. Having inherited the house and extensive estates in 1950, the 11th Duke had to face 80 per cent death duties, which took many years to discharge, via the sale of land and the house’s treasures such as important artworks and rare books. The bill was eventually settled, so that Chatsworth could continue to be occupied by the descendants of its sixteenth-century builder. Today it is home to the 12th Duke and his family.87

  In the story of its revival, a major factor is the two-way devotion between the Chatsworth staff and the Cavendish family. When I wrote to the duchess, asking about staffing at Chatsworth, she responded to my letter by sharing memories of those who had made it all possible, and inviting me to come to meet some of them. I visit on a crisp winter’s day, with sun and mist making that famous Derbyshire valley, with the dreamlike baroque palace at its heart, seem all the more beguiling – and the Devonshires’ joint achievement in keeping it together all the more inspiring. For the duchess, who has retired to a house in the beautifully sited estate village of Edensor, one element stands out in the story of those who have worked at Chatsworth. ‘Trust is essential. It’s got to be done on trust or it might as well not be done at all.’

  Chatsworth, which the duchess made her life’s work for nearly half a century, is, as with many great houses, a complex organism, ‘like a museum and a grand hotel combined, but it has to be a home too, otherwise it is simply a museum’.88 She introduces me to three of her staff who had each worked for her for forty years or more. As she said: ‘They have been the absolute lynchpins of everything, men of such amazing calibre.’ These were Henry Coleman, who is still her butler today and was both butler and valet to the late duke since 1968; Alan Shimwell, her chauffeur and loader, also since 1968; and Jim Link, who started working for the estate in January 1950, in the forestry department, and went on to become head gardener.

  I start by meeting the family’s long-term butler, a legend to the many distinguished guests entertained by the duke and duchess. Henry Coleman began his working life at Chatsworth in March 1963:

  I came as a footman, aged only sixteen, and after five years became butler. I had first started work at Lismore Castle in the forestry nursery, and when the family came to Lismore at Easter for their annual visit I was asked to take the logs around for the fires, with the odd man. The butler told me that there was a footman’s place going at Chatsworth and asked whether I was interested. Being the eldest of twelve children, all living at home, I jumped at the chance.

  There was a substantial permanent staff in the house at the time, with ten or twelve indoor staff:

  three in the kitchen, two in the pantry, two housekeepers, four daily women, two chauffeurs, a lady’s maid, a nurserymaid, a nanny, a butler, two footmen, and another two or three who could be called on when we were busy.

  I learnt my job from three butlers: Mr Bryson; John Pollard, who was butler for fifteen years, both here and at Lismore; and Mr Edward Waterstone, the then dowager’s butler, who was with her for fifty years. He taught me a lot. There was another who had worked for the duke’s grandfather. They were all of the generation before the First World War, all the real McCoy, all very nice, and all getting on in years. They would help out at various parties at Chatsworth. They would tell me how to get on in general, how to look after things, what not to say and what not to do – that was very important.89

  Alan Shimwell joined the Chatsworth staff in 1952: ‘I was eight years on the estate farms and then went into the gardens. My first job at Chatsworth was stooking corn, so that the water ran off and not into the stooks.’ He moved into driving almost by chance: ‘In 1968, the duchess asked whether I could go to Bolton Abbey with her because the chauffeur was off sick, and then I became her driver. In 1970 I started loading for her on shooting weekends and I went on doing it for thirty-three years. We went all over England, including royal places, such as Sandringham, or to Lord Gage on the south coast. There would be nine or ten guns and often the weather would be terrible; you used to turn blue. I pa
cked up driving five years ago and now look after the poultry, the duchess’s own, and do a bit of gardening.’90

  Jim Link recently retired after fifty years in the gardens. ‘When I first came, I looked after the forest nursery, then drove lorries, then went on to the demesne department. Then I helped in the gardens, under Denis Hopkins.’ Mr Link had grown up at Chatsworth: ‘My father was the head gardener here and I was brought up in a flat in the stable yard. I wanted an outdoor job and forestry sounded good. Father asked the head forester and that was that.’91

  As was so often the case, he was trained on the job:

  I learnt everything about forestry from older people – at that time the people near retirement were looked after and the young got to do all the heavy work. We had a good foreman, Len Newton, and also Billy Bond. As you learnt how to do each thing, you were moved on to the next thing. In the demesne department we looked after roads and drains and trees; these were some of my best years – creating, planting. The old men really knew everything. Technology has changed a lot. I enjoyed my time in the garden, doing work that has a visible result.

  The garden staff were probably closer to the house staff than some estate departments are because of the flowers we grew to decorate the house. My uncle Jim used to bring in orchids and flowers from the garden and greenhouses. The kitchen was supplied with vegetables too. Once lupins were wanted for the American ambassador’s room. The gardener took them up there, put them in the vases, and great heaps of greenfly fell off on the dressing table. There were greenfly everywhere.92

  Both Mr Shimwell and Mr Coleman would follow the household from Chatsworth to the other family houses, Bolton Abbey and Lismore Castle, both in Ireland, a pattern that was typical of great households in previous centuries but is much less so now. Mr Shimwell recalls: ‘We would go to Bolton Abbey for 12 August for the grouse shooting and stay four weeks.’ Mr Coleman adds: ‘His Grace would go out for the beginning of the salmon fishing and then Her Grace would arrive in March for the Easter holidays. The cook would come, Mrs Canning, and the housekeeper, Maud Barnes, a house-maid, and Mary Feeney, Her Grace’s sewing maid.’

  What was it like having to slot into another household? Mr Coleman says: ‘You were made to feel welcome. You were part of a family. We used to look forward to going. It was much more fun when we started driving there. It was quite a business, travelling on the train with the staff and the luggage; I used to have to look after twenty-two pieces, which I had to get on and off the train when we changed at Manchester and Liverpool. We’d get on the boat to Dublin, and then it was back on another train to Limerick and then another to Lismore, still with all that luggage.’

  There were some compensations: ‘When we used to land in Dublin, we would have to wait two hours in a square there to get a can of oil before we could set off for Lismore. The cook, Mrs Canning, loved picnics, so we always used to have to stop en route for one of her picnics; they were good, mind you.’93

  As in so many great country houses with long-serving staff, there is considerable interconnection between the families of the estate and the house staff. Mr Coleman’s wife has also worked for the family; his brother-in-law is the butler and house manager at Lismore Castle; and one of his sons is the silver steward for the public side of Chatsworth. Alan Shimwell is related to two former comptrollers of the house. Mr Shimwell’s uncle Walter began as a bell boy in 1908, aged twelve, sitting by the bells to fetch the relevant visiting valet when called, and became the much-admired comptroller in 1921 at the young age of twenty-six and later clerk of works, overseeing the restoration of the house in the 1950s and ’60s. Jim Link is the son of a former head gardener who also worked for fifty years in the gardens and is brother-in-law to Mr Shimwell.94

  How would they all describe working in a great country-house environment to those who have never experienced it? Mr Link, born and raised at Chatsworth, instantly replies: ‘It’s little community, we were brought up together.’ At eighteen he went off to do National Service: ‘You do have comradeship in the army, but when you came back, you really appreciated everything at home.

  ‘We were really a family and we looked up to the duke and duchess. We knew they were always behind us, and if we ever had any trouble you had a big ally there. They would bend over backwards to look after you; and you wanted to give them something in return for all that.’ Mr Shimwell adds: ‘The duke would always talk about how staff loyalty was very important: no argument.’ He valued the fact that his work was recognised: ‘When we went down to London, which made a long day, once we were back home, whatever time it was, there would always be a thank you and a goodnight. Always.’

  Helen Marchant, the duchess’s long-term secretary, agrees with Mr Shimwell: ‘It was completely reciprocated. The duke was always trying to improve “the social wage”, with the pool, gym and golf course for people who worked on the house and estate; he was always trying to pay the staff back for the loyalty they showed. He was duke for such a long time, and many people started with him in the 1950s and 1960s. You have to remember the challenge of the 80 per cent death duties that they had to face.’ Mr Shimwell added: ‘We didn’t know whether we would have jobs at the end of it all, but the duke gave you confidence that he would pull through.’95 And they did.

  As we come to the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, the privately owned country house is run more and more by people far removed from pre-war patterns and traditions. Country-house owners today expect to live in greater privacy than their parents and grandparents, but while they may cook and drive themselves, most of them still have to rely on some staff, such as secretaries, nannies, cleaners and especially gardeners, possibly bringing in regular agency staff for bigger social events.96

  As we have seen, some of the bigger country houses, whilst also drawing on agency staff when necessary, are dependent on permanent teams of staff, calling on the services of their own estate departments where they continue to be maintained. Few, whether security men, drivers, cleaners or cooks, few are likely to live in the actual house, and all operate in a world that is in many ways different from that of their forebears. What is so surprising is that the complex world of domestic service has persisted so vigorously in the middle of the twentieth century and beyond, even if in rapidly changing guise.

  The word servant may well have disappeared from everyday discourse, and there may be no obvious pattern of employment of domestic staff today, but country houses require assistance to make them work, just as they did five hundred years ago, even with modern technology to regulate heat, light and alarms from a distant laptop. In the end, one factor has remained the same through the centuries: that whatever the work involved, there must also, crucially, be some degree of human companionship, involving loyalty and trust.

  Acknowledgements

  In writing on such a subject, any writer will be indebted to the scholarship and publications of others. In this area, the most important and helpful were those by Peter Brears, J.T. Cliffe, Mark Girouard, Adeline Hartcup, Jean Hecht, Pamela Horn, Pamela Sambrook, Giles Waterfield and Merlin Waterson. I would like to acknowledge my profound gratitude and debt to those authors, particularly Pamela Horn and Pamela Sambrook, as well as to all those cited in the notes and bibliography.

  I would also like to thank the many scholars, authors, curators, archivists and friends who have helped guide and encourage my researches for this book. I would like to mention especially Clive Aslet, Charles Bain-Smith, Sir David Cannadine, Nicholas Cooper, Warren Davis, Ptolemy Dean, Trevor Dooley, Liz and Martin Drury, Gareth Edwards, Julian Fellowes, Leslie Geddes-Brown, Philippa Glanville, John Goodall, Emily Gowers, David Griffin, Michael Hall, Andrew Hann, John Hardy, Bevis Hillier, Maurice Howard, Tim Knox, Lucinda Lambton, Helen Lloyd, Patricia Macarthy, Edward MacParland, the late Hugh Massingberd, Mary Miers, Tessa Murdoch, William Palin, Jeremy Pearson, John Martin Robinson, Pippa Shirley, Peter Sinclair, Julian Spicer, Sarah Staniforth, Hew Stevenson, Nino Strachey, Sir Keith Th
omas, Geoffrey Tyack, Hugo Vickers, Giles Waterfield, Sue Wilson, Lucy Worsley and Sir Peregrine Worsthorne. Edward Town spared me his time to show me round Knole, and Jane Troughton of York University identified and transcribed relevant letters in the Wynn archive. Especial thanks to Lydia Lebus for her invaluable support as a researcher, particularly in contacting the owners and archivists of so many country houses around the British Isles.

  Many archivists, curators and librarians at country houses and other collections have been immensely helpful with guidance and direction, tours and access to documents and buildings, including Rosemary Baird at Goodwood House, Sussex; Jean Bray at Sudeley Castle, Gloucestershire; Dai Evans at Petworth House, Sussex; Robin Harcourt-Williams at Hatfield House, Hertfordshire; Kale Harris at Longleat; Christine Hiskey at Holkham Hall, Norfolk; Paul Holden at Llanhydrock, Cornwall; Christopher Hunwick at Alnwick Castle, Northumberland; Charles Lister at Boughton House, Northampton-shire, Anne MacVeigh at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland; Basil Morgan at Rockingham Castle; Christopher Ridgway at Castle Howard; Sara Rodger at Arundel Castle, Sussex; Jennifer Thorp at Highclere Castle; Collette Warbrick and her colleagues Rachel Boak and Diana Stone at Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire; and Richard Williams, archivist of Mapledurham House, Berkshire. Also to Andre Gailani of the Punch Library, Justin Hobson and Helen Carey at the Country Life Picture Library, and Jonathan Smith, archivist, of Trinity College, Cambridge.