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| Cartoon from Punch |
When we began looking at the history of St Vincent’s, we quickly became aware that a house of this size and standing would have had staff. We thought it might be interesting to look at the censuses (they are available from 1841 to 1911) and to see who was inhabiting the house as well the occupations of those living here. The first census in 1841 gave very little information, but as the information collectors realised the importance of such a survey, more details were gradually introduced over the next few censuses. Additionally, if you weren’t present on the particular day of the census, you wouldn’t get a mention, so some accuracy as to occupancy was missing. This did not deter us!
With regards to staff, social standing, types of work undertaken by servants as well as pay, all changed from late regency to the Victorian era. The census of 1851 showed the presence of over a million domestic servants in Britain, which made this occupation the second most common after agricultural labour. The number rose to 1.5 million by 1891 partly as a result of population growth and partly because of the growth of the middle classes who aspired to at least one maid-of-all-work.
Servants at St Vincent’s
The first mention of staff at St Vincent Villa was in 1861 when Mary Ann Escott was cited as “housekeeper”. This merits further investigation (another blog!), as she actually became Thomas Geen’s wife in 1846, a few years after his first wife, Jane (also the name of their daughter, but who never lived in Lynton), died in Bristol.
A housekeeper in early Victorian times was, according to the servant hierarchy, the undisputed head of the female staff and known as ‘Mrs’ regardless of marital status. Such a role demanded a huge array of responsibility and the best character was dependable, prudent, sensible, and honest.
In 1881, it appears that St Vincent Villa became a lodging house with one lodger living with the Blake family. There is no mention on the census for that year about servants, but it is q
uite likely there were staff present. Ten years later in 1891, under the Ley family (another blog due on the importance of this family in Lynton and the Church coming up), there was a general servant, Ellen Richards, and cook, Auguste Page.
The cook crucially, had immense power over the reputation of her mistress when it came to entertaining and feeding guests whereas the general servant was the cleaner of the house, and her duties were endless with the less attractive duty being emptying of the chamber pot into a slop bucket. The housemaids rose earliest, to clean the grates and light the fires ready for the family. The day was very long for them.
Ten years later in 1901, the same year as the death of Queen Victoria, there was a cook, housemaid and also a lodger, with everyone else noted as “living on their own means”. In 1911, St Vincent Villa came into the ownership of the Huish family and became a lodging house with two “boarders”, Mary Vere Constable and Gertrude Smithson, also with “private means”.
Accommodation for Servants at St Vincent’s
General accommodation for staff was described as: “In the absence of electric or gas lighting, the servants’ rooms and kitchens of this period were dark, dismal, often damp and badly ventilated places. The only advantage of Neoclassical architecture from the servants’ point of view, was that houses once again began to have pitched roofs, which could contain servant's bedrooms with gabled windows, albeit often hidden behind a stone balustrade or parapet.”
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| An Edwardian Maid |
So, we can assume that the staff lived in the top two rooms of St Vincent’s and the main cooking was done in the basement where there are two fireplaces and in what is now our kitchen, four original meat hooks in the ceiling. One can only imagine the basement and the servants’ rooms (no fireplaces anywhere in sight) would have been permanently cold with the downstairs rarely being free of damp because of the semi-subterranean nature of St Vincent’s.
We sincerely hope the servants' rooms upstairs are much cosier as there is now central heating AND running water!
