About £500 a year-cook, housemaid, and nursemaid.

About £750 a year-cook, housemaid, nursemaid, and footboy.

About £1,000 a year-cook, upper housemaid, nursemaid, under housemaid.The average salary for a domestic worker was:

The grounds and outside estates were typically run by a network of gardeners and gamekeepers while the inside was run by the different maids and butlers.įor many women, service was the ideal place to earn a wage and find stability. In her memoirs, Before The Sunset Fades (1953), Daphne Fielding, ex-Marchioness of Bath, detailed the forty-three member staff employed at Longleat during the Edwardian era (I found this list over at the Edwardian Promenade website which has some fantastic resources if you enjoy the Edwardian era!):īy many accounts, a staff of forty-three servants was considered extravagant, most houses operated with less than half the number of staff as the ex-Marchioness of Bath, but still…a household of even ten staff was considered large. Being “In Service” was considered by lower class and women, to be a highly coveted position for surprisingly long periods in history.įor big houses and estates in the English countryside, a large staff was essential to the running of the property. In 1871 over 4% of the population was employed ‘in service’, the vast majority of them women. All upper class houses had several servants, and most middle class households employed at least one or two servants. The Victorian era in Britain saw a peak in the numbers of servants employed in households. WWI brought the decline of the domestic staff with most of the male staff being drafted to the Great War and the women replacing jobs previously held by men or working in machine factories helping the war effort. In the Edwardian era which Downton Abbey is set, the domestic service was at its peak. How you would like to work in a great house like we see every week in Downton Abbey? Well it might not be as glamorous as you might think! In this Project Downton discussion post we talk about the domestic staff.

Life As A Victorian Lady by Pamela Horn