We have been enjoying exploring our Victorians topic and we visited Hopetoun House last week. We thought it would be a nice, relaxing day for us, learning all about life as a servant in the Victorian days…how wrong we were! We were immediately dressed as servants, some of those being the scullery maid (a terribly hard job!), nursemaid, boot-boy (and many more) and put straight to work! In fact, we arrived at Hopetoun House at 9.45…they expected us at 6am! Some of the boys had the pleasure of becoming the ‘butler’ for the day…what a nice job that must have been! Hopetoun House has really put into context what we have been learning and it gave us a real insight to what life would have been like back then. Life as a servant meant long hours, extremely hard work and no days off! We had a fantastic time, the Housekeepers Mrs Ward, Mrs Stewart and Mrs Carmichael kept us working hard all day, however, they were actually quite kind to us! A big thank you to Hopetoun House and the ladies for a wonderfully engaging day!
It sounds as if you had a wonderful day – despite all the hard work!
Some people are asking why the ‘servants’ are facing away from the staircase and towards the wall…well, the ‘servants’ are in fact standing on the main staircase. No servant was allowed on the main staircase (a special treat for us that day!) except when the house maids were cleaning the stairs. If Lord or Lady Hopetoun passed them on the stairs, the servants must stand and face the wall!
It was really exiting and fun making the butter and enjoying it on some crackers I loved them and i’m sure everyone else in my class agree.