IT’S the beloved period drama centred around the lives of Victorian-era servants and the aristocrat overlords they gleefully obey.
But while Downton Abbey, which released the film The Grand Finale this month, showcased savoury scenes of care between master and employees, champagne celebrations, and even a marriage, the reality was far from so jovial.
Each bell in an Downton-era home had a different sound, indicating which room had called[/caption]
Each place at the sprawling dining table had to be 47cm in width[/caption]
Historian Andrew Lilwall-Smith, 58, paints a very different picture during an interview with The Sun, telling us: “The servants in Downton are especially nicely treated, which was rarely reality.
“It was always dependent on which house you were in, but some were especially harsh, I mean just because you were an aristocrat doesn’t mean you were a nice person.
“I remember Gordon Jackson, who played Hudson in Upstairs, Downstairs, said it was one of the best roles he’d ever had but, if he had to do it in real life, he’d rather have begged on the streets.”
To mark the release of Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale, Josh Saunders sees what a day in the life of a servant from that era was really like… and it was nothing like the well-treated, caring and glamorous lifestyles seen on TV screens.
My day as a Downton servant
The Warwick Castle tour guide puts me through my paces, exposes the true hardships that actual workers endured and the tricky tasks they expected workers to carry out.
“Basically as the master, I want to do as little work as possible and for you to do everything,” Andrew says, before warning of the brutal tasks I’m soon to face.
“There are endless jobs to be done and I don’t want to do anything,” Andrew, from Bucks, says. “Someone has a role for everything, from clock winding to snipping the candle wick.”
Showing up to the servant’s entrance at the near-1,000-year-old fort with a giant suitcase in toe, master Andrew snatches the written references from my hand.
These recommendations were vital in the days prior to the internet and should they be lost, a person could easily find themselves on the streets “completely doomed” and at deathly risk.
Andrew reveals: “You had to be careful as a servant as you were very reliant on references, if you lost them getting another job is almost impossible.
Footman, a much desired role, had to be 6ft 1in and have ‘impressive calf muscles’[/caption]
‘Giving room’ was where servants had to face a wall whenever their master entered the room and couldn’t leave until they were dismissed[/caption]
“One book claimed that two of Jack the Ripper’s victims were housemaids who lost their references and so prostitution was their only option.
“They were never full time sex workers, they were just drunkards, who from time to time did things to get money for drinks.
“They were well-spoken, well-respected women who lost their references and ended up living on the streets, so that’s how they made extra money.
“Meeting Jack the Ripper was a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
‘Stud muffin’ fixation
Led through the maze-like corridors and hidden servant staircases, I’m warned: “You cannot get lost.” No easy feat, considering the sizeable 64-acre grounds.
Inside a poky bedroom with a sink, bed and little else, I’m measured up to decide my role.
BIZZARRE DOWNTON-ERA LINGO
IT wasn’t just unusual rules that existed during the times Downton Abbey was set but also an unusual lexicon too.
- ‘Coffee sisters’ – best friends, or ‘besties’.
- ‘Champagne weather’ – bad weather
- ‘Butter upon bacon’ – extremely extravagant
- ‘Gigglemug’ – someone smiling
- ‘Evening wheezes’ – fake news
- ‘Brabble’ – to argue
- ‘Cattywampus’ – something askew or disarray
- ‘Hugger mugger’ – secret or suspicious behaviour
- ‘Schoolman’ – a teacher
Unfortunately, due to being two inches short of 6ft 1in – the required height for a footman, I’ll be a typical, general servant.
It’s a shame because footmen were paid £150 pounds a year – roughly £17,525 today – compared to the meagre £20, roughly £3,140 now, for housemaids and lower male servants.
“They were very, very coveted,” Andrew says. “You would do anything not to lose your footman and they tended to be seriously good looking.
“It became a boasting point and would earn homes a reputation, everyone would visit, say Chatsworth, because the footman there was the stud muffin of Europe.”
They also needed “very impressive calf muscles” and to bag this high-paying job, some would stuff make-shift padding down their silk stockings to increase the bulge.
Among their tasks would be to walk in unison “basically like one human being” and they need to be “very good looking” – a requirement, I dare not ask if I fit the bill for.
This fixation with appearances transcends to modern times, with it claimed Prince Andrew banished one staffer because he “couldn’t bear” to look at an ‘unsightly’ mole on his face.
Standing before Andrew, who towers over me at 6ft 7inches tall, I’m renamed ‘Henry’, the name assigned to all servants, so that my masters “don’t have to remember new names”.
Each morning, ladies of these luxury houses expected buttered bread sliced so thinly they ‘didn’t need to chew’[/caption]
Sun man Josh serving the mini pieces of bread and tea[/caption]
Footmen were known as ‘James’ and housemaids either Sarah or Ruby – additionally, housekeepers and cooks were always given the “automatic honorary title” Mrs.
“She became a Mrs, even if she wasn’t married, and she wouldn’t be married, because the only person you might fall in love with was another servant,” Andrew says.
“If two of them fraternised under my roof they would both be fired.”
Secret flings
Similarly, relationships between the aristocrats and servants were big taboo, with Andrew stating “you wouldn’t talk about it”.
This contrasts sharply with Downton storylines, like Lady Sybil Crawley marrying her chauffeur Tom Branson. Other times the inter-class dalliances were more problematic.
Andrew adds: “Sometimes, these romances would be consensual, other times, as we saw in Downton, not consensually.”
He’s referring to the infamous 2013 episode where lady’s maid Anna May Bates was attacked and raped by a guest’s valet.
ITV received 200 complaints after the scene aired and 244 further were filed to media regulator Ofcom, who later decided not to investigate further.
Warwick Castle housed the Greville family, later known as the Earls of Warwick, during the Victorian era.
They alone would have had around 28 indoor servants and double that outdoors, ranging from cooks to housemaids, gardeners and chauffeurs.
“That’s small as far as stately homes go, we’re quite tiny,” Andrew says. “Beaver Castle, nearby in Leicestershire, were way into the double digits, maybe up to 60 staff.”
Having been measured up and suited in black tailcoat suit with a pristine white bow-tie, I head to the servants quarter ready to receive orders.
There’s a bell for each room listed 11 to 19, each with a deafening yet slightly different sound ranging from grandfather clock to shrill clanking.
No soon as it rings, I’m summoned and the laziness of my masters is clear than them having multiple bells in most rooms, including both sides of the fireplace.
“If you’re sitting in one place, it’s a good three-foot walk to the bell, you couldn’t possibly do that,” Andrew explains.
They also had secret doors and hidden passageways used only by servants so that masters were “not conscious of you being there”.
Servants were renamed ‘Henry’ or ‘James’ so that their masters didn’t have to learn their real names[/caption]
Warwick Castle historian Andrew Lilwall-Smith showing how to sharpening a shaving blade[/caption]
Andrew says: “I don’t want to know you or where you came from. I want to ring a bell for you to arrive, I’ll call you by the wrong name, you’ll serve me and then you’ll disappear.”
Among my first tasks are carrying a scolding hot water bottle – that looks like a barrel bomb – and has to be carried with a thick towel and placed at the foot of the bed.
I struggle to lug two nine-litre buckets filled with warm water to fill a bath, needing at least eight trips up four flights of stairs.
Later, I’m made to stoke the fire with an iron prodder from a companion set and polish shoes, ahead of one many outfit changes by my mistress.
Andrew says ladies would switch into different attire a staggering six times a day, or every three hours, while men changed up to four times.
Whole nights facing the wall
Next up, I’m talking to the grandiose Cedar Drawing Room, the family’s sprawling dining room, where I’m taught each place at the table must be 47cm in width.
The spread would include up to five glasses – one for champagne, red wine, white wine and others – including orange juice for Princess Anne and beer for Prince Andrew.
“Some houses may have even more,” Andrew laughs, while correcting my clumsily laid out utensils before being taught how to use a metal bread crumb sweeper.
I’m also taught about ‘giving room’, where servants had to turn to face and press their noses to the wall once a master entered and couldn’t leave until dismissed.
“If I’m a master, I want you to do what I want you to do, I may be polite but I don’t want to know of your existence,” Andrew explains.
“When giving room, you may be stoking a fire but will have to face the wall. If I can’t see your face, you’re invisible and I can walk straight past you.
“If I’m walking past you that’s not a problem but if I decide to have afternoon tea, you’re going to stand and stare at that wall for the next three-and-a-half hours.
“You would have to wait until you’re dismissed, you’re not much short of a window mannequin.
“At a house not far from here, every night a butler had to stand and listen to his master’s snoring until five in the morning, when he eventually said ‘I’m going to bed now’ and so could leave too.”
The freeze-frame would also happen if a master tripped – the only exception was if they heard their master choking to death.
Servants would have to lug heavy buckets of water up many flights of stairs to fill a bath[/caption]
Hot water bottles were scolding to touch and difficult to place in a bed without getting burnt[/caption]
“If I heard a clunking sound thinking, ‘Oh, they’ve dropped something’ I wouldn’t turn around and help,” Andrew says.
“It’s much better that I’m not seen to know they have done something silly or foolish.”
Additionally, servants would not permitted to wish masters a ‘Good morning’ or ‘Good night’ due to that apparently appearing like the servant was “telling them what to do”.
Masters were treated like they were in “a very posh hotel”, with ladies served a cup of tea and millimetres thin slice of buttered bread triangles, as an appetiser, in bed.
Trying to slice such a small piece required six-plus attempts due to them needing to be “so small you don’t need to chew”.
With large grounds, hot food was often impossible. For those working in Burghley House, in Lincolnshire, there was a 40-minute walk between the kitchens and dining room.
Servitude was a gruelling life, no doubt, and nothing compared to the glammed-up, highly varnish scenes seen on Downton Abbey and other period dramas.
“Like in Gosford Park, a policeman walks through the front door, that would never, ever, ever happen, they would have come through the servants entrance,” Andrew says.
“In Downton, a policeman says something to Lady Mary, and she replies ‘Do you know who I am?’ and replies, ‘I don’t care if you’re the Queen of bloody Sheba.’
“He would have lost his job there and then. There’s no way on earth you would speak to a member of the aristocracy like that.“
Barely fed & fined per leaf
But according to Andrew, Warwick Castle was “a very good house” that treated servants “very well” – even taking care of elderly workers in their dying days at the family’s expense.
“Other houses ghastly to work in,they got through servants at a rate of knots because they were not well treated,” he says.
“Bleinham Palace servants were so underfed, that the families scraped the leftovers from their meals into a gold bowl to take down to supplement the servants’ food.”
While servants were free to leave, they were bound by needing a good reference, should they want to work again – as highlighted by the ladies supposedly killed by Jack the Ripper.
Warwick Castle servant master Andrew turned down Sun man Josh and ripped up his references[/caption]
“If you lost that reference letter and go for another job no one would even look at you,” Andrew says. “Some may call your previous employer to check if you were a good worker.”
And their masters knew this, some were exceptionally cruel like Lady Astor, of Cliveden House, in Berkshire, who was compared to a famous film villain.
Andrew recalls: “One servant said, ‘I thought I could deal with anybody until I went there and met Lady Astor.’
“Talk about evil, she comes across like Miranda Priestly in the film The Devil Wears Prada.
“I believe she used to fine gardeners if there was a single leaf on the lawn. She would charge them a penny for everyone she found because ‘they should have swept them up.’”
‘Doomed & destitute’
Some houses were especially cut-throat. Miss Alice de Rothschild walked back with the family’s butler of 30 years and “dismissed him there and then” without reason, Andrew claims.
“One woman, whose husband was the groundsman, came back from his funeral to find an eviction notice on the door,” he adds. “Your treatment depended on which family you worked for.”
Despite these conditions, they were desperately sought-after positions for those from lower classes – but there were strict requirements including being able to read, write and speak coherently, even though those skills were rarely demonstrated.
“If your parents are living on a farm and you’re in the field and lose an arm in an accident, that’s you doomed, you won’t find work again,” Andrew says.
“But at a good stately home, you’re fed, water and possibly looked after for the rest of your life. Some would have a pension to a degree, dependent on the house.”
While Andrew says there was “never much mentioned” about servants getting holiday, they would have been entitled to unpaid leave should their master approve.
“When Marion Crawford, known as ‘Crawfie’, who took care of Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret, wanted to leave to get married she was refused.
“The Queen Mother told her it wasn’t very convenient for the children at the time and didn’t grant her leave of absence.”
It’s a tiring profession and Andrew suspects most workers would have toiled for “a minimum of 18 hours a day, or not much less than that”.
After an exhausting day of servitude, I’m booted out of Warwick’s doors and cruelly, my master Andrew tears up my references with glee.
Doomed for future employment and destined for a life on the streets, the real servants – not the pampered prince-like workers on Downton – had a difficult life and for now I’ll stick to my day job.
Downtown Abbey: The Grand Finale is out in cinemas now.
