Author: Louisa Cornell

WHEN IT IS THE KITCHEN IN A REGENCY ERA HOME

When we think of a kitchen today, we think of a single room.

  No this is not my kitchen. Too few books on the counters and not enough dirty dishes. And there’s no dog trying to get into the fridge.

Historically, the words kitchen and kitchens were used interchangeably. The reason? In stately homes and even in townhouses in the wealthier areas of London, the space where food was prepared and where servants did a great deal of their work was divided into a number of rooms, a veritable village, and whilst each room had a work specific name, together they were all called the kitchens.

The kitchens in a stately home were generally located on the ground floor. However, in some homes they were actually located in a separate building with walkways or tunnels to the dining room in the main house. In town houses the kitchens consisted of fewer rooms and were located on the ground floor. A very few were actually located on a basement level and the food would be carried to the dining room and a few other public rooms on the ground floor.

The ideal kitchens were located far enough away from the family quarters to avoid the smells of cooking to offend, but close enough to allow the delivery of food whilst still hot. They were located off an entrance in order to facilitate the delivery of supplies and if possible close to the kitchen garden for easy access.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some things were the same whether the kitchens were in a London townhouse or a country stately home. The room actually called the kitchen was basically the same no matter the location. It was the central food preparation area. From here the Cook (Yes, Cook was the title and a proper noun. You prepare an eight course dinner for a party of 100 guests at the drop of a hat and you deserve a little capitalization!) or, in some houses, the Chef ruled her or his domain. The housekeeper and the butler ruled the house. The Cook or Chef ruled the kitchen and had charge of the kitchen maids, the scullery maids, and the pot boys.

Kitchens tended to be oblong. The window would be positioned to the left side of the range, and the kitchen dresser, where essential equipment was held, would stand close to the work table.

The main components of this area were the large kitchen work table, where most of the food preparation was done, and the ovens.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another vital room in the kitchen village was the scullery. The proximity of the scullery to the kitchen was important. The two were located close together, in an area where both had ample natural light (to prevent mold,) but where one did not need to cross the kitchen to get to the scullery. Often the only entrance to the scullery was outside with a pass through to the kitchen. Keeping the two areas separate was vital so as not to contaminate prepared food with the soiled water. The scullery was usually located along an outside wall of the house to aid in the hauling of water and the flushing out of the drains.

Soiled water, you say? Yes! Because the scullery was primarily a wash area. Pots and pans and kitchen utensils were washed here. As was the family china, but not in the same sinks. Double stone sinks were used for most of the dishes. A copper sink was used for the china to prevent chipping. In some larger homes, with larger sculleries, there were boilers for the laundry to be boiled.

Some food preparation was done in this area, such as chopping vegetables, as they needed to be washed first. Hygiene was essential in order not to contaminate existing food. This meant constant hauling of fresh water, scrubbing, washing, and cleaning. The scullery floor, made of stone, was lower than the kitchen’s, which prevented water from flowing into the cooking areas. Dry goods were stashed well away from the scullery, which also had to be kept dry in order to prevent mold. To prevent standing in water all day long, raised latticed wood mats were placed by the sink for the scullery maid to stand upon.

 

 

 

 

 

The next stop on our tour of the kitchen village is the still room. The still room started out as a combination pharmacy and distillery. Prior to the nineteenth century most medicines were herbal and every woman in the house from the mistress to the lowliest maid might have the knowledge and the talent to create them. And many homes brewed their own beers and ales. When they did, it was done in the still room. By the mid-nineteenth century some of these activities continued, but the room was used primarily to preserve and juice all of the fruit harvested on the estate. This was the room where tea trays were prepared. There was also a hearth where a kettle was always on the boil for that emergency pot of tea.

 

 

 

 

 

An annex to the kitchens, but still considered part of the “village,” was the butler’s pantry. The butler’s pantry was traditionally used to store silver, serving pieces, and other kitchen related items. Because the silver was kept under lock and key in the butler’s pantry the butler would sometimes actually sleep in the pantry to guard against thievery. It was also an area where meals were staged as the different removes were delivered to be taken to the dining room. The butler sometimes had a pantry-maid whose job it was to dust and keep everything in order. Sometimes a butler’s pantry might have a sink in it for quick clean ups. Polishing the silver, however, was usually a task reserved for the butler.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A few other rooms one might find in the “kitchen village” were :

A pastry room which is exactly what it sounds like. Some wealthier families might keep a pastry chef, as well as a chef. More likely this room was used by Cook and perhaps a kitchen maid she trained to create desserts for large events or even to create pastry dishes to be stored and used later. Cakes might be stored in this room.

A curing room used a fired clay sink lifted up on pavers and a slate tub to brine meat. The windows were kept needed to keep out flies. Yes, you really needed to know that little fact.

A dairy scullery was used to keep all of the utensils, molds, and cookware associated with the making of cheese, butter and other dairy products clean. The remains of these processes were tough to clean and a separate scullery was used to make certain flavors of other foods were not cooked into those used for dairy products, thus effecting the flavor of those products. It was also where dairy products might be cooked down and prepared.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some kitchens might be adjacent to a cool room. It would contain a wood cupboard, an early refrigerator, which afforded food storage on one side with hatch doors for blocks of ice from the underground ice house on the other. This room was also used for preparing and hanging the hams and slabs of bacon that hung behind the ventilation slats above the door, while rails were used for hanging other salted meats. Other cabinets might have a pattern of holes in them to promote air circulation around certain food items in storage.

As you can see, a kitchen is not always a kitchen. And sometimes it takes a village to prepare His Grace’s dinner and see it served properly!

 

When it is in an English stately home, of course!

English stately homes were designed to include a great many rooms. Each room in these homes had a purpose. Some served useful purposes, some were strictly for show, some have modern day equivalents, and others have no equal at all. When visiting a stately home or even viewing photos of the rooms in these homes it is easy to wonder…

Why is this room a drawing room, but this room is a saloon?

If this is a sitting room then what is a parlor?

It can be quite confusing and many people think there isn’t a ha’pence worth of difference between them. Of course, there is! At least to a Regency England fanatic there is. Let me explain. (And, yes, this is just an excuse to look at photos of beautiful rooms in English stately homes. So shoot me! But not in the best parlor.)

In the United States, when one thinks of a saloon these are the sort of images that come to mind.

 

 

 

 

 

The second photo is simply a gratuitous image of Val Kilmer playing Doc Holliday. But you get the point. The American version is quite different from the English one.

That’s not a saloon. THIS is a saloon!

In considering the names for rooms in stately homes it is always helpful to discover the year(s) the house was built and the name of the designer or architect. The rooms of the first floor (not to be confused with the ground floor) of a stately home are often the most indicative of the era in which the home was built. In large 18th century stately homes the first floor consisted of a series or rooms opening into each other in an ongoing circular procession. There were no outside entrances to each room One had to enter the first room and cross it to get to the second room and so on.

The layouts of homes–particularly older houses for ancestral family seats would have been built along floor plans more common in the centuries before–would not necessarily have all rooms accessible from a common hallway or passage. Some rooms could be entered only from other rooms, connected by doorways throughout. (This is often notable in grand houses or even palaces such as Versailles.) Consider the time period of when a house was likely to have been constructed or added on to (newer wings on an older central structure could make for interesting quirks of differing architecture,) and the fashionable layouts popular at the times.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The saloon, an older version of the French word salon was usually the largest and grandest room in the house. It might also be called the state room or great chamber. It was capable of hosting a large gathering, an exhibition, or even a ball. This was a remnant of the days when large homes such as these were in the hands of royalty or their relations. People would enter the home by way of the saloon or great chamber. One moved through the series of rooms after that based on one’s position in the homeowner’s retinue.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Drawing Room Has Nothing to Do with Art

The term drawing room is derived from the 16th century terms withdrawing room or withdrawing chamber. In large 18th century English stately homes a withdrawing room was a room to which the owner of the house, his wife, or his distinguished guest who occupied a main suite of rooms in the house could withdraw for more privacy. It was usually off the saloon or great chamber and sometimes even led to a formal or state bedchamber. It was still considered a formal room in which to greet and spend time with visitors. It was also the reception room for evening entertainments. A house might have more than one drawing room as in larger homes there might be several suites of rooms to which a drawing room was attached.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Drawing rooms came in three basic sizes and their uses were more often than not dictated by these sizes.

Small Size : 16 feet wide by 18 to 20 feet long

Good Size : 18 feet wide by 24 feet long

Superior Size : 20 feet wide by 30 feet long to 26 feet wide by 40 feet long

 

 

 

 

 

Essentially the drawing room was the grand standard for everything–sit in there when one was At Home to receive callers in the morning (“morning” being anytime from breakfast [9-10am usually] to dinner time [3-6pm, depending on how fashionable one was – the later one was the more fashionable one was considered] and not necessarily literally 12am-11.59am,) and then to gather prior to dinner, then for the ladies to withdraw to after dinner, later to be joined by the gentlemen, where coffee and tea would also be served late in the evening. There might have been a musical instrument or card tables for entertainment, or one might simply have relied on conversation or reading.

Here is where it became a bit complicated. How many drawing rooms might a house have? It depended on the size of the house and how much the family might entertain. If one was rich and received many callers, one might have a morning room as well as one or two drawing rooms. In order to designate these rooms or to give servants direction the rooms might be called The Blue Drawing-Room or The West Drawing-Room or The Egyptian Drawing-Room, identified by the color of the decor, the location in the house, or the style of the decor.

A lady might have had a more intimate and personal sitting room, sometimes attached to her bedchamber suite, but she only received especially close friends there. A morning room could have been used for these calls, or the standard drawing-room. If a morning room was used, the drawing-room was then used in the evening for pre-dinner and after-dinner socializing and entertainment. For this the largest/fanciest drawing-room was used to make the best impression.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Come into my Sitting room… Morning room… Parlor,  said the Duchess to the Duke

The last rooms in this particular category were for the private use of family members. As I noted earlier, a lady might have a sitting room attached to her bedchamber suite or in a large country house she might have a sitting room or parlor for her own particular use. A sitting room, parlor, or morning room was more often than not used for the family to spend time together. The ladies of the house might gather to sew, embroider, read, and chat. The family might gather to discuss the day’s events or a family issue or simply to enjoy each others company. Whilst townhouses had most of the same rooms as one’s country house they were usually smaller in number and size. And whilst you would find these last three rooms in a country house they were more commonly found in townhouses. In the mid to late nineteenth century, with the rise of the moneyed middle class, these were the rooms more commonly used to entertain visitors and for intimate family gatherings in the smaller houses associated with merchants and their families.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And there you have it! A little tour and brief primer on one specific set of rooms one might find in a Regency and/or Victorian era home. Was it an excuse to also look at photos of some lovely rooms whilst our friends Victoria Hinshaw and Kristine Hughes Patrone are touring the UK? Absolutely! Stay tuned for a look at another set of rooms soon!

 

For those of you who do not know, Romance Writers of America has an annual conference, usually in July, which welcomes two thousand to twenty-five hundred romance writers from all over the world. The location varies as it is held on the West Coast of the United States, the East Coast of the United States, in the Midwest, and in the South on a four year rotating schedule. This year’s conference was held in Orlando, Florida at the Swan and Dolphin Hotel in Disney World.

Every year at this conference the Beau Monde Chapter of RWA, the chapter dedicated to writers of Regency Historical Romance, has an all day mini conference the day before the RWA Conference gets into full swing. I am not exactly certain, but…

What might one call a gathering of forty or so authors who write romance set in the Regency Era?

A Promenade ?

An Austenium ?

A Waterloo ?

A Dukedom ?

The possibilities are endless! Whatever one calls it, this day long event is one of the highlights of my year. We writers tend to be an odd lot and gathering with people just as odd is always a source of inspiration. Add to that the inherent uniqueness of those who choose to study (obsess over) the Regency era in order to write better novels and you have a meeting of the minds rare in our everyday lives. This year’s conference was no exception.

What does one do at a Beau Monde Mini Conference?

7:30 – 9:00 a.m.	Registration and Continental Breakfast
8:00 – 8:45 a.m.	Annual General Meeting/Volunteer Recognition Ceremony (all members encouraged to attend)
9:00 – 10:00 a.m.	Georgian Dublin: From The Castle to Hell – Cora Lee
10:00 – 10:15 a.m.	Break
10:15 – 11:15 a.m.	Women of the Regency: How they loved; what they thought; and how they were viewed – Callie Hutton
11:15 – 11:30 a.m.	Break
11:30 – 12:45 p.m.	Lunch and Keynote with Kate Pearce
1:00 – 2:00 p.m.	Creating the Regency Feel – Grace Kone
2:00 – 2:15 p.m.	Break
2:15 – 4:00 p.m.	If You Knew Regency London… – Louisa Cornell and Kristine Hughes (Mid Workshop Break 3:00-3:10 p.m.)
	Break
7:00 – 8:00 p.m.	Libations of the Regency Workshop – sponsored and presented by Ella Quinn
8:30 – 11:00 p.m.	The Beau Monde Soirée Regency Dance Mistress Catie Condran Geist Royal Ascot & Reader’s Choice Awards Silent Auction

Each year members of the Beau Monde present workshops on an area of research in which they have done intensive research. Some of this research is done for specific books, but much of it is done because research is what we love and we do tend to get carried away when investigating a topic.

We call it Falling Down a Rabbit Hole.

Our own Kristine Hughes Patrone and I conducted a two-hour workshop on Regency London and we had enough material to do two more hours if we had been given free rein. I will be posting out workshop here at Number One London soon, so stay tuned!

As you can see it is a full day of Regency research, adoration, and a great deal of discussion. As much as we Regency romance authors spend a great deal of our time chained to a desk with a stack of research books on one side and a pot of never ending tea on the other, we also enjoy each others company. And, of course, the soiree which ends our day long conference is always a great excuse to dress up!

 

 

 

 

 

 

And as this conference took place in one of Disney World’s lovely hotels we honored a request by the management to promenade in the lobby in our Regency finery. Nothing like becoming a tourist attraction, but we Regency authors will do anything to promote our books!

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE OLD OPERATING THEATRE MUSEUM

AND

HERB GARRET

9A St Thomas Street

London

Parts of this museum are not for the squeamish and access at present is limited to those who can climb a rather steep 52 steps up a spiral staircase, but the insight offered into the worlds of medicine and surgery during the Regency and Victorian eras by this unique and little known place is not to be missed. In addition to an extensive collection of medical accoutrements it houses what is considered Europe’s oldest surviving operating theatre.

St. Thomas is one of the oldest hospitals in London. It was established in Southwark, a part of London considered a den of immorality and criminal elements at the time. Thomas Cromwell pronounced it the bawdy hospital of Southwark when he visited it in 1535. It was originally set up as a hospital for unwed mothers and by the time Cromwell visited it was known for its treatment of those who suffered with venereal diseases. The hospital’s manager, Richard Mabbott is said to have kept a concubine and to have sold the church plate. At least they picked a manager who would fit in.

The hospital was moved a number of times over the years, but the clientele changed very little. St. Thomas’s Hospital was dedicated to serving the poor, those with venereal diseases, and a fair share of lunatics. Between 1693 and 1709 the hospital was rebuilt through the efforts of the hospital board president, Robert Clayton, and his friend, Thomas Guy, who founded Guy’s Hospital next door. The medieval church around which the original hospital was built was demolished and replaced with the church which now houses the museum.

In 1751 the male operating theatre was added to the hospital. It was housed in the top floor to give it better access to daylight. The female operating theatre, the one which is the centerpiece of today’s museum, was installed in 1821. Eventually the hospital moved on to better quarters, after a period of time using the buildings of the zoological gardens in Lambeth, but the original operating theatre and the herb garret were rediscovered during renovations of the church building in 1962.

The operating theatre is as it would have appeared in the early to mid-nineteenth century, complete with the viewing areas used to teach medical students. The rest of the museum is an amazing exhibit of medical instruments, medical specimens as they would have been housed during this era, and the contents of the herb garret and pharmacy where the medicines of the day were dried and prepared.

The museum features period mock surgeries and surgical lectures on Saturdays at 2:00 PM and weekly lectures on the preparation of medicines and the Regency and Victorian era pharmacy. Their educational programs, lectures, and walks are listed on the website and frankly if I had endless time I would attend each and every one. Check out the list here :

http://oldoperatingtheatre.com/schools-groups

 

The museum has a blog which is a treasure trove of information on the history of medicine as it was practiced at St. Thomas and other hospitals of the Georgian and Victorian eras.

Anyone with an interest in the earliest surgeries of the “modern” era, the creation of medicines from herbs, and some of the odd and frankly frightening ways medicine was practiced prior to the twentieth century should avail themselves of the incredible resource that is The Old Operating Theatre Museum and Herb Garret.

Check out their website, but be prepared to spend some time pouring over this brilliant online presence of a real gem of a museum! Definitely adding this one to the UK bucket list!

 http://oldoperatingtheatre.com/