Secrets
of the Manor House: Recap and Review
January
22, 2012 by Vic
https://janeaustensworld.com/2012/01/22/secrets-of-the-manor-house-recap-and-review/
This
Sunday, PBS will air on most stations an hour presentation of Secrets of the Manor House, a documentary
narrated by Samuel West, that explains how society was transformed in the years
leading up to World War One. Expert historians, such as Lawrence James and Dr.
Elisabeth Kehoe, discuss what life was like in these houses, explain the
hierarchy of the British establishment, and provide historical and social
context for viewers. For American viewers of Downton Abbey, this special
couldn’t have come at a better time.
The British manor house represented a world of privilege,
grace, dignity and power.
For their
services for the King in war, soldiers were awarded lands and titles. The
aristocracy rose from a warrior class.
This
world was inhabited by an elite class of people who were descended from a line
of professional fighting men, whose titles and land were bestowed on them by a
grateful king.
Manderston
House, Berwickshire.
For over
a thousand years, aristocrats viewed themselves as a race apart, their power
and wealth predicated on titles, landed wealth, and political standing.
Vast
landed estates were their domain, where a strict hierarchy of class was
followed above stairs as well as below it. In 1912, 1 ½ million servants tended
to the needs of their masters. As many as 100 would be employed as butler,
housekeeper, house maids, kitchen maids, footmen, valets, cooks, grooms,
chauffeurs, forestry men, and agricultural workers. Tradition kept everyone in
line, and deference and obedience to your betters were expected (and given).
22 staff
were required to run Manderston House, which employed 100 servants, many of
whom worked in the gardens, fields, and forests.
As a new
century began, the divide between rich and poor was tremendous. While the rich
threw more extravagant parties and lived lavish lives, the poor were doomed to
live lives of servitude and hard work.
Manderston
House in Berwickshire represents the excesses of its time. The great house
consists of 109 rooms, and employed 98 servants just before the outbreak of
World War One. Twenty two servants worked inside the house to tend to Lord
Palmer and his family. Every room inside the house interconnected.
The
curtains and drapes, woven with gold and silver thread, were made in Paris in
1904 and cost the equivalent of 1.5 million dollars. Manderston House itself
was renovated at the turn of the century for 20 million dollars in today’s
money. This was during an era when scullery maids earned the equivalent of $50
per year.
The
servant hall boasted 56 bells, each of a different size that produced a unique
ring tone. Servants were expected to memorize the sound for the areas that were
under their responsibility.
Scullery
maids were placed at the bottom of the servant hierarchy. They rose before dawn
to start the kitchen fires and put water on to boil. Their job was to scrub the
pots, pans and dishes, and floors, and even wait on other servants.
Life was
not a bed of roses for the working class and the gulf between the rich and poor
could not have been wider than during the turn of the 21st century.
Thoroughbred
horses lived better than the working classes.
While the
servants slept in the attic or basement, thoroughbred horses were housed in
expensively designed stable blocks. As many as 16 grooms worked in the stables,
for no expense was spared in tending to their needs.
The
stables at Manderston House required 16 grooms to feed, care for, and exercise
the horses.
As men
and women worked long hours, as much as 17-18 hours per day, the rich during
the Edwardian era lived extravagant, indulgent lives of relaxation and
pleasure, attending endless rounds of balls, shooting parties, race meetings,
and dinner parties.
Up to the
moment that war was declared, the upper classes lived as if their privileged
lives would never change.
The
Edwardian era marked the last great gasp of manor house living with its
opportunities of providing endless pleasure. For the working class and poor,
the inequities within the system became more and more apparent. The landed rich
possessed over one half of the land. Their power was rooted in owning land, for
people who lived on the land paid rent. The landed gentry also received income
from investments, rich mineral deposits
on their land, timber, vegetables grown in their fields, and animals shipped to
market.
The lord
of the manor and his steward can be seen walking among the farm laborers, many
of whom were
women.
The need
to keep country estates intact and perpetuate a family’s power was so important
that the eldest son inherited everything – the estate, title, all the houses,
jewels, furnishings, and art. The laws of primogeniture ensured that country
estates would not be whittled away over succeeding generations. In order to
consolidate power, everything (or as much as possible) was preserved.
Entailment, a law that went back to the 13th century, ensured that portions of
an estate could not be sold off.
The
system was rigged to favor the rich. Only men who owned land could vote, and
hereditary peers were automatically given a seat in the House of Lords. By
inviting powerful guests to their country estates, they could lobby for their
special interests across a dinner table, at a shoot, or at a men’s club.
Thoroughbred
horses were valued for their breeding and valor, traits that aristocrats
identified with.
The
Industrial Revolution brought about changes in agricultural practices and
inventions that presaged the decline of aristocratic wealth. Agricultural
revenues, the basis on which landed wealth in the UK was founded, were in
decline. Due to better transportation and refrigeration, grain transported from
Australia and the U.S. became cheaper to purchase. Individuals were able to
build wealth in other ways – as bankers and financiers. While the landed gentry
could still tap resources from their lands and expand into the colonies, the
empire too began to crumble with the rise of nationalism and nation states.
The
servant hierarchy echoed the distinctions of class upstairs. The chef worked at
the end of the table on the left, while the lowest ranking kitchen maids
chopped vegetables at the far right. The kitchen staff worked 17 hours a day
and rarely left the kitchen.
Contrasted
with the opulent life above stairs was an endless life of drudgery below
stairs. On a large estate that entertained visitors, over 100 meals were
prepared daily. Servants rose at dawn and had to stay up until the last guest
went to bed. Kitchen maids, who made the equivalent of 28 dollars per year,
rarely strayed outside the kitchen.
One bath
required 45 gallons of water, which had to be hauled by hand up steep, narrow
stairs. At times, a dozen guests might take baths on the same day. House maids
worked quietly and unseen all over the manor house. The were expected to move
from room to room using their own staircases and corridors. Underground tunnels
allowed servants to move unseen crossing courtyards.
Maids and
footmen lived in their own quarters in the attic or basement. Men were
separated from the women and were expected to use different stairs. Discipline
was strict. Servants could be dismissed without notice for the most minor
infraction.
Footmen
tended to be young, tall, and good looking.
Footmen,
whose livery cost more than their yearly salary, were status symbols. Chosen
for their height and looks, they were the only servants allowed to assist the
butler at dinner table. These men were the only servants allowed upstairs.
Green
baize doors separated the servants quarters from the master's domain.
Green
baize doors were special doors that marked the end of the servants quarters and
hid the smells of cooking and noises of the servants from the family.
The
Jerome sisters were (l to r) Jennie, Clara, and Leonie
As
revenues from agriculture dwindled, the upper classes searched for a new
infusion of capital.This they found in the American heiress, whose fathers had
built up their wealth from trade and transportation. Free from the laws of
primogeniture, these wealthy capitalists distributed their wealth among their
children, sharing it equally among sons and daughters. The ‘Buccaneers,’ as
early American heiresses were called, infused the British estates with wealth.
‘Cash for titles’ brought 60 million dollars into the British upper class
system via 100 transatlantic marriages.
Transatlantic
passages worked both ways, even as American heiresses crossed over to the
U.K., millions of British workers
emigrated to America looking for a better life. The sinking of the Titanic,
just two years before the outbreak of World War One, underscored the pervasive
issue of class.
Most
likely this lifeboat from the Titanic was filled with upper class women and
children. Only 1 in 3 people survived.
The
different social strata were housed according to rank, and it was hard to
ignore that a large percentage of first class women and children survived,
while the majority of third and second class passengers died.
Labor
strikes became common all over the world, including the U.K.
Society
changed as the working class became more assertive and went on strikes. The
Suffragette movement gained momentum. Prime Minister David Lloyd George was a
proponent of reform, even as the aristocracy tried to carry on as before.
Lloyd
George campaigned for progressive causes.
Inventions
revolutionized the work place. Electricity, telephones, the type writer, and
other labor-saving devices threatened jobs in service. A big house could be run
with fewer staff, and by the 1920s a manor house that required 100 servants
needed only 30-40.
Change is
ever present. The last typewriter factory shut its doors in April, 2011.
Women who
would otherwise have gone into service were lured into secretarial jobs, which
had been revolutionized by the telephone and typewriter.
The manor
house set enjoyed one last season in the summer of 1914, just before war began.
Many of the young men who attended those parties would not return from France.
Few expected that this war would last for six months, much less four years.
Officers lost their lives by a greater percentage than ordinary soldiers, and
the casualty lists were filled with the names of aristocratic men and the upper
class.
Over 35
million soldiers and civilians died in World War 1
Common
soldiers who had died by the millions had been unable to vote. Such inequities
did not go unnoticed. Social discontent, noticeable before the war, resulted in
reform – the many changes ushered in modern Britain.
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