Postcards from Bath #8: Below stairs
The kitchens in these 18th century townhouses were in the basement: hot, cramped, damp and poorly lit compared to a spacious country house. Nevertheless, elaborate meals to impress guests would be created by skilled cooks.
The scullery was where household cleaning and laundry was done. Water came from a private well, extracted by a pump, and coal was delivered through a coal hole directly down from the street.
Flat irons were heated on the range.
Sugar was a precious commodity, supplied in a blue paper wrapped block known as a sugar loaf and broken into smaller pieces with a sugar nipper.
The kitchen passage was the busy thoroughfare between the servants quarters and the main house. Food carried along here from the kitchen would rarely arrive in the Dining Room still hot.
There was a sizeable Servants' Hall, where the staff would gather to eat. The Housekeeper would have her own cosy room, from where she organised the household, paid bills and stored the valuable commodities, spices and dried goods. It was very much a 'upstairs/downstairs' divide. Georgian servants worked hard and had little life of their own.
That was a very well organized kitchen!
ReplyDeleteI would not have wanted to be one of those servants.
ReplyDeleteSuch a different way of life.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely this was not a kitchen I would have liked to work in, but it was organized.
ReplyDelete