Offices & Gardens

Comments on Offices

Steward

The first entry for the Offices and followed by the dairy are extensive entries over three floors for the The Stewards Office or Roome. This contains a bedstead but has attached closets and a writing room overhead, shelves boxes and Drawers for writeings. The south side of the Offices overlooks the courtyard and the servants' entrance to the house before the 1800s. With its staircase access to the overhead rooms, it seems an appropriate location.

The contents included a repeating clock, invented in 1670, the mechanism enabled clocks to strike the hour on demand by pulling a cord or lever. Useful in the dark.

Dairy

In the 1688 inventory this was in the basement of the House. By 1698 only the butter room remained there. All the equipment is seen removed to the Offices,

2 Dresseres, 17 Shelves, 13 punchions [large shallow earthenware bowl for milk to stand in to allow the cream to separate] , 3 Tubbs, 6 pales, 1 Cheese presse, 7 brasse potts and Kettles, 1 stewpann, 7 Cheese fatts [mould for cheese curds which is then pressed] , 1 marble morter, 2 pair of Cheese Briggs [wooden frame to support strainer to separate curds and whey] , 1 pair of wood Scales, 1 haire Sieve [horse hair sieve], 2 Churns [butter churns], 2 Cheese boards, 1 bowle, 1 Chaire, 2 stooles with Gallatree hookes, fire shovel, tongs and Bellows, 1 Dry Barrell 

The Chamber over the Dairy has just one bedstead suggesting just the one dairy maid.

Washhouse

The washhouse relates to washing clothes & linen not bodies, 1 Copper, 5 large Tubbs, 6 lesser Tubbs, 2 kitts, 2 tables, 1 Thrale, 1 Forme, 1 Brandrett [trivet] , 1 Rack Iron, 2 wood Scoopes, 1 Cloth Baskett, 1 Barrell. The barrel could have contained raw urine from the chamber pots.  The ammonia in the urine removed grease and stains before the washing was then soaked in a 'buck tub.' 

Before that you suffer it to be washed, lay it all night in urine, the next day rub all the spots in the urine as if you were washing in water; then lay it in more urine another night and then rub it again, and so do till you find they be quite out

Hannah Wooley (1677) The Compleat Servant-Maid, Or the Young Maidens Tutor, Directing Them how They May Fit Themselves for Any of These Employments, Viz. Waiting-woman, House-keeper, Chamber-maid, Etc

The 1688 inventory tells us of one Copper in a furnisse, one fire rainge. The existing north chimney stack in the Old Kitchen is the likely fire for the washhouse.

Laundry

In Belton's context the laundry is separate from the washhouse with its own large fire rainge (1688) and used for ironing linen, Closepresse, 2 long Tables ... 9 soothin [smoothing] Irons, 2 boxes, 2 wood horses [for drying clothes over], a parcell of Linnen yarne. When the 1800s kitchen took over the washhouse, the laundry moved into the extended southern half of the Offices, accommodation now called Laundry Cottages.

Bake House

A Bake House is listed at the Offices in a 1935 plan of the drains, possibly an outbuilding in the area immediately south. The plan awaits proper inspection. Hulsberg's C18 plan below has a series of outbuildings labelled 'M', but still called the Offices. That courtyard, listed as the woodyard, poultry yard and venison yard on various plans it is now a garden. Could the 1935 Bake House be in the same location location as that of 1698?

In the Backhouse, 1 Meale Box, [wheat meal, flour or meal derived from whole grains of wheat, often not finely ground], 1 Eltin Cimbling  [tub for kneading dough], 1 Coulerake [coal rake], 1 forke, 1 peele, 1 Tubb, 1 baskett, 2 Tables, 1 houreglasse [bread baking took 3 to 4 hours, opening the oven door before time would lead to loss of heat and baking]

and

In the Meale chamber, 2 Boulting Mills [tub into which flour is sifted from the bran], 1 Stoole, 1 Trough, 4 old Casements, 2 Cases, 1 Baskett

The typical C18 order of wheat each week at Belton was 9 strikes equivalent to 18 bushels, enough to make 230 quartern loaves, i.e. 33 loaves a day each weighing ~ 4 lbs. With a daily C18 consumption of 1.5 to 2 lb of bread, enough for at least 60 to 80 retainers. The top grade, whole of the wheat was milled separately in the Pastry, in the House for the family. It included the wheat germ and the bran producing a flour rich in nutrients and with a distinct flavour.

Waterhouse

Entered just before the cupola listing and so likely near the Offices, 2 large Lead Cisterns, 1 water Engine worth £30, the second most expensive Offices valuation. A ready supply of  water was required for the washhouse, but was this for extinguishing fires? Another 1698 one is In the passage at the Chappell door, 1. water Engin. Thus two fire engines were available. The first commercial steam pumped water engine only appeared in 1698 and so Belton's water engine was hand-pumped. The Office has a drain sourcing both wings that runs into the River Witham (1857).

That a fire in the kitchen may have happened is the increase of the 24 leather fire buckets nearby to Three Score Leather Buckets (60) in the 1737 inventory.

Engine House

1 paire of Iron gates, was this the intended storage area for the water engine?

In the great Garden

After the Offices the appraiser lists buildings in the Great Garden, mapped by Hulsberg circa 1724.

Hulsberg's Octagon & Garden House on modern day imagery.

The rectangular Octagon banqueting house and Garden House are shown in red and georeferenced onto a modern map. The orientation of the two buildings parallel the axis of the 1680s formal and kitchen gardens (15 degrees) rather than the old manor house axis that Wyatville's Italian Garden follows (6 degrees). One can deduce that they were probably erected contemporaneously with the House.