Up and Down Stairs (46 page)

Today Mrs Magee shares the cooking of shoot dinners with friend and colleague Hester (a specialist in desserts: ‘She’s marvellous, I don’t know how I would manage without her. She is in her thirties and very energetic’), who also runs the teashop for the visitors to the house. Opening houses to the public often brought new blood into
country-house staffs, making them larger than they were in the immediate post-war years.
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Although Mrs Magee originally came from a different part of Yorkshire, the family of her husband Ken, whom she met at Sledmere, have a long connection to the Sledmere estate. Ken’s father was the farm bailiff, and he himself used to work at the famous Sledmere stud, founded in 1801. Now he works part-time in the gardens. They live today in a lodge to the estate.

In the smaller staffs of the 1950s and 1960s, the stalwarts of country-house life were often a married couple, living in the house and providing devoted care, both to the building and to the family, who because of the demands of their other estates or commitments in London might themselves often be in residence for only a few months of the year.
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One such couple, Alec and Annie Bagshaw, lived in and looked after Boughton House in Northamptonshire in the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s, working there for two successive Dukes of Buccleuch and their families. Not only was the panelling in the great hall made by Mr Bagshaw but he also catalogued the armoury and prepared it for display to the visiting public. Their daughter, Mrs Rosalinde Tebbut, offers a fascinating testimony to their lives.

My father was born in 1909, and started in the estates workshop in 1932. He was a journeyman before coming to Boughton; his grandfather was a carpenter attached to Boughton too. From 1942, my father was in the Royal Navy and when he came out in 1945 he was attached directly to Boughton House, helping to keep the house going.

When I grew up we lived in the village of Warkton. My mother worked at Boughton as a housemaid, because my father was already employed there as a carpenter. About the time I got married in 1956, Mrs Foy, the housekeeper, retired and my mother took over from her. Mrs Foy had been quite a traditional type, and the butler, Mr Batts, used to look after the dining room, the wine cellar, the silver and service. My parents lived in from 1957 and retired in the early 1970s, by which time my father had been working at Boughton for forty-five years.
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The Bagshaws were placed in sole charge of Boughton while the duke, his family and other staff travelled between London and their other estates, Bowhill in the Borders and Drumlanrig: ‘My mother
and father enjoyed their work, and always took their annual holidays when the duke and duchess moved to Scotland. The butler and cook would go with them to their other estates and each house had its own housekeeper.’

Most of the housework was done by daily cleaners, while Mr Bagshaw, although officially the carpenter, effectively became the man of all works and custodian:

My father also did things like picking up the duke from the station. A lot of the staff at Boughton then would travel down from Scotland to live in while the family were there and then go back again when they left.

They were wonderful employers. When someone wrote a book saying how horrible working as a servant was, my mother was really indignant and said she had been wonderfully treated. Although she couldn’t deny the author’s own experience, hers was quite different. She had a pleasant time working at Boughton; the work was quite specialised and knowledge came with the years.

It was a proper little community and you had to get on with people. Things changed when the new duke [Walter], the present duke’s father, inherited the estate in 1973. They still had big house parties between Easter and August. The new duke’s wife, Duchess Jane, used to send notes to my mother detailing what rooms were required for which guest, who was staying and what they needed. The same routine was followed every year. Fruit and vegetables came from the kitchen gardens, and flowers were cut for the rooms. Duke Walter would come for the odd weekend on his own and my mother would cook for him then. The duke, a big forestry man, would come just to look at the tree planting.
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Mr Bagshaw became an authority on one aspect of the collection:

My father created the armoury, for the guns and pistols, when the house opened to the public, and became very knowledgeable. He was even consulted by the Tower of London. He also restored furniture. He was the house carpenter but in a way he was more like a curator, and he used to help hang pictures and tapestries. He helped clean the silver too – it was usually done by him or the butler. After my parents retired they both acted as guides at Boughton.

They really loved that house and I used to tease them that it meant more to them than I did. In truth, we all enjoyed Boughton. Our family could use the pool and tennis courts when the duke’s family were away.
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In modern times the country house is usually maintained by the daily cleaner, sometimes working in teams of two or three. In many cases they may have long associations with the family or the estate and may even have worked for the same house for twenty or thirty years. One such is Della Robins, the daily at Chavenage in Gloucestershire. When asked about her forty-eight years with the family and the house, she revealed a familiar nexus of relationships.

I came to Chavenage when I was fifteen and a half, and went to the local school. The Lowsley-Williamses were looking for someone to help look after the children, so I was taken on as a nanny’s help. When my parents were divorced, my mother became housekeeper to Frank Baker, a widower and the cowman at Chavenage to Major Lowsley-Williams. Frank retired in 1966 and later he and my mother got married. My husband’s father was the maintenance man at Chavenage. My father-in-law, Fred Robins, also worked at Chavenage for over fifty years.
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When Della arrived in 1961, there had been some post-war scaling down but there was still a traditional household of staff:

When I came there was a cook, Mrs Bianek (who was a Polish refugee), and her husband, and a butler, George Thomas, and someone to do the laundry. Originally there were three gardeners, Mr Bianek, Mr Medcroft and Mr Jay. I had a short overlap with a nanny, and then became the nanny myself. It’s just me now! Outside, today, there is Paddy Jackson, who was once the groom and now helps do the lawn, the logs and the outside jobs.

At first I lived with my parents in a cottage on the estate. I was up at half past eight and back home by five-thirty or six o’clock. I married in 1966, and when our first son was born in 1967 I worked different hours. I didn’t think about how long I would work at Chavenage, it all just happened. When the cook left she wasn’t replaced, and Mrs Lowsley-Williams took over the cooking, but there was always some member of staff about. Thomas the butler died about
twenty years ago. I have a great affection for the house; it hasn’t changed over the years, despite the numbers of visitors.
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[Her original duties were] mostly looking after the children and babysitting but then I took over the cleaning. I especially like cleaning the brass. The hardest thing was polishing the oak boards, but better Hoovers and polishers have made the job a lot easier. When I was first here there were three cleaning ladies but they had only white fluffy mops and had to get down on their knees to apply the polish. It was just a family home then and there were nothing like the number of visitors we have today with weddings, corporate days and coach parties. The floors can get pretty dreadful when you have a wedding party.

[On a typical day] I come in every morning, do the ironing, make the beds, and look after the living area. Then if there has been a wedding or event at the weekend, I move on to the front rooms of the house. On open days I do the flowers in the house and in the chapel, usually with flowers from the garden.

I can still remember the house when it was lived in by Mr Lowsley-Williams’s uncle, Colonel John, and his two sisters. One sister, Mrs del Court, used to take us to Sunday school in Tetbury, and always organised a party here at Chavenage for the children on the estate. When Colonel John was still alive, as children we looked upon the house as something special.

My mother worked as a cleaner for the major, Mr Lowsley-Williams’s father, at the Manor Farm. Now, after cleaning in the morning I help Joanna [Lowsley-Williams] with the catering, lunches and cream teas, especially when we have coach parties, but mostly serving the public. I enjoy it; you meet such a range of people. There are not so many people working for the estate now as there were in the early 1960s; it’s all contracted out. Paddy and I are the only two full-time workers left. When I first got married Barry and I lived in the house where I had grown up, then we were offered the flat in the stables at Chavenage, and later we moved to Avening where my husband came from. Both my children were christened in the church and my daughter had the blessing for her wedding there.
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If the cleaner is still central to country-house life, so is the indispensable maintenance man. One of the longest-serving members of staff at Alnwick Castle in Northumberland is Graham Luke, who in 1965, at the age of fifteen, was taken on as an apprentice joiner in the estate
works. ‘I saw the advertisement in the local paper. I first earned £2 17s 6d, in “olden-day money” as my children call it. I worked forty-four hours a week including Saturday mornings.’ He has now been involved with the care of the castle for thirty-five years. ‘It’s a wonderful building, unique, I love it. It’s the Windsor of the North.’
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He first reported to ‘the clerk of works, known as “Cappy” Hepple – as in flat cap, I think. I remember that I thought he was incredibly old then, but I was only fifteen. He was then probably the age I am now and he retired soon after I joined. After that, Ian August became clerk of works. We still have a maintenance department of joiners, painters and builders, but no plumbers or electricians. We did once but not any more. When I first came the staff was not that big, about ten, but in the 1970s it went up to twenty-five.’

At that time the estate workers were renovating cottages:

The estate had a lot of them; most of north Northumberland belonged to the duke, with lots of little villages. In 1975 we started rewiring the castle, putting in the telephone as well as intruder and fire alarms. By then I was a joiner. I came to work up at the castle and just never left. Officially now I am the ‘maintenance liaison officer’, which means if there is a problem in the castle, or in any of the family’s houses, I have to go and inspect it, and assess whether our own works department can deal with it or not.

To the fifteen-year-old that he was then, the duke and duchess seemed:

very regal, and part of a much more formal life. Everything was run by a housekeeper, Mrs Richardson, who used to frighten the life out of me. She was next to God and what she said went. Oh, she was a demon. Nobody was allowed into the castle without her say-so. Even if you had come to do some work she had asked for, you would be met at the back door and sent along to her sitting room. Then you would have to state what your business was, what exactly you were going to do, and usually why you hadn’t done it sooner to boot.

She had a room lined with oak cupboards for the linen. Sometimes you would see the maids queuing up for fresh supplies. The cupboards are all gone now. She had a chaise longue in there and a coal fire. It was
the duty of one of the maids to lay and light that fire every morning, and then Mrs Richardson would have her breakfast in front of it.

From my perspective, the butler was the duke’s butler, and the housekeeper was the duchess’s housekeeper, that’s how I remember it. The present duke and duchess don’t want the daily interference of a butler in the way that Duke Hugh’s butler used to run his bath in the morning and do everything. They naturally want more privacy. Today they have a household controller, but there are still eight daily ladies, just as in Duke Hugh’s time.

In the 1960s everyone knew who everyone was. Alnwick estate was more formal and intimidating in some ways but it was more of a family too. Most of the staff employed at that time had some connection with the estate. When I applied for my job, the farmer whom my father worked for knew the under-agent at Alnwick, who gave me a letter of introduction.

Duke Hugh used to hunt four days a week and as a result he knew every farmer and every shepherd. Each day he would go out around noon and look round the farms, perhaps because he wanted a hunt jump put right, and then he would call in at the farm. It drove the cook mad, because lunch was always planned for one o’clock. In the 1960s during Duke Hugh’s time the stables were hallowed ground. The stud groom was Fred Lister. I think he and Duke Hugh had grown up together and they were certainly good friends. Sometimes the duke would go to the stables and have a whisky with Fred.
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The servants’ quarters of the past two centuries are no longer in use nor are they part of the highly enjoyable tourist route. The ornate Gothic Revival kitchen is now a refectory for a visiting American college; the old servants’ hall has been turned into a library, although subterranean passages still connect the kitchen to the dining room. The old stables, partly an exhibition site for liveries and carriages, now house the restaurant and shop. Mr Luke’s affection for – and knowledge of – the building that has been so long in his care is evident in every room.
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