At the far end of the service wing was a block containing the dairy, brewhouse and old bakehouse, which had been converted to a gun room by the 1880s. The dairymaid, Fanny Cowley, had a relatively comfortable, albeit solitary, working life. Alongside the dairy room, where milk was settled in pans to extract the cream, and the dairy scullery, where Fanny churned butter, she had her own sitting room with a fireplace. It’s likely that she slept in a room over the dairy.
Since the early 19th century the Nevilles had kept a pedigree herd of Alderney cattle, which produced a creamy milk that was excellent for butter making. The dairy registers kept by Lord Braybrooke’s land steward, William Hosley, show that the dairy produced over 3,700 quarts (over 4,200 litres or 1,100 US gallons) of cream and 4,000 lb (over 1,800 kg) of butter from September 1881 to August 1882. The two were very interested in the scientific analysis of milk yields, collecting detailed information about the quantity and quality of milk produced by each cow and how this varied over the course of the year and according to their diet. In 1882 their dairy registers received a special award from the British Dairy Farmers’ Association (now the Royal Association of British Dairy Farmers).
