The Servants

Most of the servants ate in the servants’ hall, now the public restaurant. (This room had served as the kitchen before Sir John Griffin Griffin built the current kitchen block in 1763.) The upper servants, including Mrs Crocombe if she wasn’t on duty, dined in the housekeeper’s room, or in the butler’s pantry. Daily records of the numbers dining in the house from 1877 show on average 20 people in the servants’ hall and 7 in the housekeeper’s room. So, 27 servants, while the numbers eating in the dining room were only two, three or four, unless the family had guests. Some of the outdoor servants would have eaten close to their workplace, like the garden apprentices and journeymen gardeners whose meals were prepared by a bothy woman in the kitchen garden. The bothy was behind the greenhouse, part of a range of lean-to buildings which included the head gardener’s office, a tool shed, a mushroom house, a potting shed and accommodation for the unmarried garden staff.