These are things that Wimpole Hall and the surrounding Estate can tell us, or that we can infer however there are many things that the house alone can’t tell us. The video (Edwardian House) shows that the prayers of the owners’ were really just used as a way to blackmail the servants into obedience. They usually prayed for the obedience, hard working and faithfulness of their servants. This indicates that they were not truly religious otherwise they would pray for the poor and the sick. This is another thing that Wimpole Hall cannot help us with.
Source 3 from the resource book, which is an extract from the diary of Queen Victoria’s Maid of Honour on a visit to Wimpole Hall shows that it was only the servants who regularly attended the chapel. “How horrified poor Lady Hardwicke felt, to think that the Queen should have walked into the chapel for morning prayers and found nothing but the servants” This indicates that the owners were not entirely religious at all and that only the servants used the chapel regularly.
The video source “The Edwardian Country House” shows that both the masters and servants met once a day for prayers. This was the only time in the day that the rich and poor would meet and spend time with each other. All this we can learn from the video whereas in contrast Wimpole Hall can show us very little about peoples’ everyday lives. However the video has limitations. It can only show us one period in history and not the time era that Wimpole Hall spans, in this way it is not a useful source.
It is not actually known why the Chapel within the House was built. It may have been for one of several reasons. These are mentioned in sources 4 and 6 from the resource booklet. Firstly Wimpole Hall is built in the Classical style, which was very fashionable at the time; part of this style involved balance and symmetry. It is thought that maybe the chapel was built through the need to balance the west wing, which was built in the previous decade although this is not proven. Secondly the aforementioned factor of the owner of the house Lord Harley wanting to compete with his rival the Duke of Chandos by conspicuous consumption. It could just have been that the owners of the house did not wish to share the parish church with the poorer people of the parish. In this way Wimpole Hall provides little supporting evidence.
In the Chicheley chapel there is separate seating for the owners of the house above the place where the servants sat. This shows that the servants were given a place to pray and worship but the chapel alone does not tell us if they actually did. However source 2 in the resource book- the rules and regulations for servants, provides further evidence. It states “Servants are desired to attend daily prayer in the chapel” this is a corroboration of the two sources, so we know for definite that the servants used the chapel daily.
It is much more difficult to discover the religious attitudes of the servants rather than the owners, firstly because it is not their house so even though they attended the chapel it does not necessarily mean they were very religious. Secondly they do not leave records or accounts and there is a lot of missing information that we need to build up a fuller picture. There are so few written sources as many servants could not read or write, and the few pieces of evidence that there were have been lost or destroyed.
One thing that the Wimpole Estate still has evidence of are the deaths of the servants as many of them were buried in the Parish graveyard by the church. The gravestones are very small but they are still evident.
Wimpole Hall is probably more useful as a source in helping us to understand the social rather than the religious attitudes of the rich and poor during the 18th and 19th centuries. This is because we can look at all the rooms in the house and at the surrounding area to give us clues and evidence whereas when we are looking for evidence about religion we can only look at the chapel and the church.
The chapel can also help us to understand the social attitudes of the rich and poor. It is two stories high and it has two levels of seating- there are seats on the ground floor, leading from the servants quarters, which we can assume are for the servants. There are also seats on the upper floor, leading from the masters’ rooms, so we can infer that the masters would have sat here. This proves that the rich and poor were even separated in church. So even though all should be equal in the eyes of God the owners of Wimpole Hall feel that they should be superior to their servants even in church.
By looking at Wimpole Hall and its estate it is easy to see that the owners were happy to spend money on their leisure. Examples of this are the folly, the gardens, a man-made lake, the Chinese Bridge, the yellow drawing room, statues, and fashions in architecture and interior decoration.
This shows how hugely rich they are in comparison to the servants who have only sparse sleeping quarters.
The difference in their lifestyles becomes very apparent when you compare sources 1 and 6. Source 1 is a table of jobs and wages of servants in the 1790’s and source 6 is from a Wimpole Hall guidebook talking about the chapel. From source 1 we can see that the cook, Thomas Wood (who was the best-paid and most important servant) earned about £55 a year. Sarah Brookes the Housemaid (one of the lesser servants) was paid just eight pounds a year. At this time the owner- Lord Harley was prepared to pay £1350 for the decoration of the chapel. This really illustrates the social divide, when one man can afford to pay £1350 for decoration and another has only eight pounds a year on which to survive.
The folly, which is part of the Wimpole Estate, is another demonstration of how hugely rich the owners were. They invested in this grand piece of architecture just for fun. It is a great example of conspicuous consumption.
For the rich and wealthy, their’ reputation was extremely important. It was therefore essential to make a good impression to your guests. This may be why there is a ‘hidden door’ in the red room. I think that it is for two reasons: firstly the new classical style of architecture and decoration needed balance and symmetry, so it would look odd and unsightly to have a door at one end of the room and not at the other. But secondly and more importantly this red door was the servant’s secret entrance. This implies that the owners of the house do not want the servants to be noticed, so much so that they have tried to hide them from view.
The importance of reputation might also explain why there is an expensive looking picture above the servants’ stairwell. At Wimpole Hall the servants have a separate set of stairs to the owners. These stairs come up outside the door to the yellow drawing room. So if the door to yellow drawing room were opened it would have been possible for guests to see the top of the servants’ staircase. The owners wanted their guests to think that they treated the servants well and that they looked after them so they put a nice picture and a grandfather clock at the top of the staircase to create this impression.
The stable block to the left of the house is a large and impressive building with a clock tower on top. This was made to look nice because visitors approaching the house would have seen it. The stables housed not only the horses but also the grooms. The grooms slept in the eaves of the roof where conditions were cramped and dirty. This may have been because the owners wanted the grooms to be near to the horses, so they did not waste time travelling from the house to the stable block. However I think it more likely that the owners wanted them away from the house and did not want visitors to see them. This proves that the rich really did not care about their servants at all.
This leads us to ask why the servants of the house became servants in the first place? It may have been because they were desperate and needed the money; otherwise they would have been forced onto the streets. Maybe they had families elsewhere whom they were trying to support. They could have been born into it by their parents or they may just have accepted that this was the way life was. But whatever their reason it is something that Wimpole cannot show us.
The video showed that servants were expected to face the wall if the Lord or Lady of the house entered a room that they were cleaning. It stated “They should face the wall or try to blend into the room, so that the Lord or Lady should not feel obliged to have to speak to them.” This source is very useful in helping to understand the social attitudes of the owners of the house and yet it is something that Wimpole cannot tell us.
Wimpole Hall cannot show us what the owners of the house did in their spare time. Written sources, pictures or modern video recreations are able to give us at least some ideas or clues, whereas Wimpole Hall can’t tell us anything.
One thing that is very difficult for historians to find out is how the rich actually felt about the servants because we don’t really know. It might be that had been brought up with the typical attitude of most of the upper classes at that time. That was that servants were there to serve them and that was the way it should be, some of the rich even thought that they were doing the servants a favour by giving them a place to live and food to eat, and a small wage. So historians have to guess, infer or use different sources to try to gather the true feelings of the rich.
Another question that we need to ask ourselves is: ‘Is Wimpole Hall typical of stately homes at the time?’ Because if we only look at the features of Wimpole Hall we can’t be certain that these are typical features of all stately homes built in that era. For instance if we looked at Wimpole Hall in isolation we would not know if all homes had features like the ‘hidden door’ - we would just have to guess or assume that they were similar.
There are also many things that the Hall does not show about the social attitudes of the servants. It doesn’t, for example show the daily routines of the servants, like when they had to get up, or what jobs they had to do, or any other things about their daily lives. Instead we have to look to video sources like ‘Edwardian Country House’ to help to give us clues. The most useful kind of source would be a primary source that was written at the time, like a diary of servant or a letter to a friend, or relative. Unfortunately many of the servants were not literate and could not read or write, so they could not record their jobs or their thoughts and feelings. Secondly any records that were written would probably not have survived and would have been destroyed, damaged or lost by now.
Wimpole Hall is also unable to tell us about the hierarchy between the servants. Other sources like Edwardian Country House are far more useful in helping us to understand the social hierarchy of the servants and the way in which they ran the house. Through these recreational sources we can establish the superiority of the head servants such as the cook, the butler and the housekeeper over the lower ranked servants. Also written sources like source 1 of the resource booklet (a table of jobs and wages of servants in the 1790’s) can help us to infer the status of the servants as it shows us their yearly wages, enabling us to determine their status. These two sources are very helpful as they corroborate so we can see that the evidence they give is true.
However there is one way in which video sources are not very helpful. Because these videos are secondary sources they recreate what they think life would have been like in the 1700’s. The characters that we see on these videos are stereotypes of the servants so they may not give a true or realistic portrayal of what their life was really like.
We can learn a lot of information from some unlikely sources, for instance any books that were written in this era. A great example of these are the novels by Jane Austin such as Pride and Prejudice. These are primary sources as they were written at the time and they give us huge amount of information about the social attitudes of the rich and poor during the 18th and 19th centuries. It demonstrates to us things like the societies values and morals, and also their beliefs, things like upholding a good family name and honour. These are all things that we can’t learn from Wimpole Hall.
After looking at all the evidence and sources I think that it is fair to infer that the owners of the house were religious, although not hugely as they did not attend chapel regularly. I also think that the lavish decoration of the chapel and their tombstones was more for decoration and conspicuous consumption than for religious purposes because if they were truly religious they would believe in being devout and not showing their wealth. I think that Wimpole Hall can provide some clues as to the riches’ attitude towards religion but sometimes the evidence can be very misleading and written sources are probably more accurate. As for the servants I think that they were probably religious but it is very difficult to tell as they have so few written records and as the house did not belong to them it is hard to use the building as evidence.
The social attitudes of the rich and poor are quite clear: the rich expected the poor to work for them, as that was the way it had always been. They did not respect them, thank them or care for them except for their basic necessities. They were embarrassed by their presence as they tried to hide them by using hidden doors. The servants would have had to obey their masters otherwise they would have been dismissed. Therefore they treated them with courtesy and politeness, as this would have been expected of them.
There is one last problem when trying to discover religious and social attitudes; that is, that what may be true for Wimpole Hall is not necessarily true for the rest of England. We cannot tell by looking at Wimpole Hall what religious and social attitudes were like in big cities like London. We need to learn about wider society not just people living in stately homes.
In conclusion I think that Wimpole Hall is important in helping us to reveal some clues about the religious and social attitudes of the rich and poor during the 18th and 19th centuries yet there are still many things that it does not tell us. In order to gain a fuller picture of religious and social attitudes we need to use written and picture sources as well as video recreations and other stately homes. Wimpole Hall as a building can only tell us a certain amount- we have to look beyond the walls to gain extra details. But I feel that the house would give the general public a far better idea of what stately homes used to be like if it had some interactive features. For instance first person interpreters could be used throughout the home dressed in period costumes doing activities appropriate of the time, this would be far more informative than guides mechanically repeating their rehearsed speeches. If people could go into the kitchens and see the servants going about their everyday tasks using equipment and methods suitable of the time they would not only take the images in but they would understand the home far better than if they read it from a guidebook.
