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rose at dawn to clean the kitchen range and start the fire so that the cook could prepare breakfast, and spent the day washing the dishes and cleaning, scrubbing and scouring any pots, pans, bowls and utensils not dealt with by the kitchen maid. She also scrubbed the floors. The laundry maid did most of her work in the wash-house at the back of the main house. If there was more than one laundry maid then the more skilled of the two was usually responsible for the family’s personal linen while the other maid did the general washing and the servants’ laundry. Maids earned between £6 and £8 a year, slept on the top floor of the house and were each provided with a close gown, stockings, cap and apron to wear while they worked.
    Servants were often able to augment their income through tips and other perquisites such as cast-off clothing or household items. The lady’s maid and valet had first entitlement to their employers’ unwanted clothes, shoes and accessories which they would often sell, and the cook and butler in some households were not above fiddling the books or helping themselves to extra food or wine as did the Groombridges—and later the Bradgates—in Friday’s Child . At Christmas time servants could expect a gift of money and when visitors stayed in the house it was expected that they would tip the staff according to their station and the degree of service. These tips, known as vails, were an important addition to many servants’ wages and, in houses where employers failed to entertain, servants often felt compelled to seek a place where tips were more likely to be forthcoming. Charles, the new footman at Darracott Place in The Unknown Ajax , was so unimpressed by his employer’s ill temper and parsimony that he had decided to leave his lordship’s employ at the end of a year and seek a position in London where the potential for tips and ‘extra gelt’ was far greater.
    The upper class had many beautiful houses set in rolling
parklands or surrounded by landscaped gardens.
    Great Estates and Country Living
    Although many wealthy families came to London for the Season, most spent a large part of the year at their homes in the country. Land had long been the foundation of wealth and power in Britain and, although the nation was still largely rural in the early nineteenth century, industrialisation had begun to make its presence felt with improvements in agricultural techniques and transport, the growth of towns and many new technologies. For those new to the peerage or to positions of wealth and power, a great estate was essential for consolidating their social position and, it was hoped, the means of establishing a dynasty. Stacy Calverleigh in Black Sheep understood fully the social cachet attached to being ‘Calverleigh of Danescourt’. Landed families were careful to protect their estates through a system of primogeniture and entail whereby the house and lands were bequeathed to the eldest son or next male heir and he was prevented from selling any part of the estate during his lifetime. Many upper-class families considered it their duty to enlarge the family estate with each new generation (often through marriage to the heir or heiress of a neighbouring property) and encouraged interaction between the sons and daughters of local landowners. In Lady of Quality Lord and Lady Iverley had long held hopes of a match between their son Ninian and Lucilla, the daughter of an old friend and heiress to the neighbouring estate.
    A kitchen garden was an important part of any great estate.
    Country houses varied enormously in size, style and layout, and castles, manor houses, converted priories and even palaces—some dating from as early as the fourteenth century—were home to many of England’s noble families. Usually built beside or in the midst of the owner’s tenanted farm land, the great houses, such as Stanyon Castle in The Quiet Gentleman , were often architectural showpieces kept separate from their