David and Margaret Richie

Margaret Ritchie: My first big job you know.

Interviewer: And how much were you earning then? 

M.R.:  £3 a month.

Interviewer: £3 a month. And your keep?

M.R.: Yes.

Interviewer: Tell me about where you, how you lived in Knole, how many other house maids were there?

Margaret Ritchie:  5 housemaids, 1 still room maid, 2 footmen, hall boy, cook, kitchen maids, scullery maid.

Interviewer: and the housekeeper, Mrs Jeffery.  And you were 5^th house maid?

M.R.:   Yes.

Interviewer: What did you do as 5^th housemaid?

M.R.:  Well, duties were looking after the staff actually.

Interviewer: So you did the rooms for the staff, you told me?

M.R.:   Yes, that’s right, yes.

Interviewer:  Then you rose to be 4^th housemaid?

M.R.:   That’s right, yes.

Interviewer: What did you do for that?

M.R.:  Well mainly floors and fireplaces.

Interviewer: So all the fireplaces had to be cleaned?

M.R.:   Yes

Interviewer:  

M.R.:   Yes

Margaret Ritchie: [Laying the fireplace] With pimps and logs.

Interviewer: Yes, that’s the word.

David Ritchie: or pimps and twigs.

M.R.: Pimps, yes..

David Ritchie: You put them onto a sort of a cradle, in the making of it, I’m talking about now, you put a string twice round them and you see.  You have a thing like that and you pressed your foot down and then it tightens it up, and then you just fix them.  And then you take it into the house for those to use, you see.  I used to go pimp making when it was wet weather.

Margaret Ritchie: We were supposed to be up by half past six in the morning so that with me doing the fireplaces, I had to have that done before the 2nd house maid came to do her dusting you see. And if I hadn’t done that, I was in the wrong. (Laughter) But we were up at half past six and then we had our lunch in the Servants’ Hall but tea we just used to have, the house maids had their tea in the Sitting Room and then we used to have an evening meal you see at 7, 7.30 I would think.   

Interviewer: When there were people in the house, when there were guests in the house, who did the waiting at dinner time and meal times for the guests?  

M.R.: The footman and the butler and hall boy, they were the ones. 

Interviewer: So it was only the men who were actually seen on duty? 

M.R.: Oh yes, yes, that’s right.   And the Still Room maid, she used to have to do things like prepare the ladies’ breakfast trays, that all had to be done in the evening, the grapefruit; and then she did the ladies’ trays – making the toast as well in the Still Room and when she was off-duty I used to do that when I was 4th housemaid. 

Interviewer: And that would all have been taken up for the ladies in their bedrooms in the mornings? 

M.R.: Oh yes. 

Interviewer: That’s a nice life! 

M.R.: Yes, yes!  It really was, yes, yes.  

Interviewer: Was there a breakfast as such or did everyone, all the guests take their breakfasts in their rooms? 

M.R.: Oh yes they mostly all had breakfast in bed.  It was just lunch and evening meals they had in the dining room. 

David Ritchie: I was responsible for the lawns when I first went there and mowed and then you know, any other work they wanted, but in the summer it used to take me 9 days to do the mowing once with a 30-inch mower.  I used to go round the inside of the wall, they reckon that that was a mile and a half, and there were 3 cuts, so that’s 4 and a half miles.

Interviewer: And you were doing this on foot, pushing a motor mower?

D.R.: Oh yes.  I didn’t have a seat and then I had to cart all my own grass away with barrows, you see, with topsoil; cut all my own grass. That’s why it took so long really, because you had to do it all. There was nowhere handy to leave the grass.  You had to go right up into what they called the Wilderness then, which was the other side of the bothy where we used to have our meals.

David Ritchie: Well I got very friendly with one of the housemaids and the higher-ups thought we were perhaps, you know, spending too much time talking to each other!  I was moved up to the kitchen garden, which I enjoyed.  I liked the men who worked up there: Tom Botten and Lou Barden, they were a good pair to be with.  That’s all it was to that.  Why it was, I don’t know who organised it.  I don’t think it was Mrs Jeffery, I think it was Mr Woods, the head man, he was the Head Gardener then.