Shooting days

When you were a 'tweenie' you had to help everybody
A shooting party at Wethersfield Manor in 1912	GLADYS SAINES from Wethersfield, who also lived to a good age, worked for the Ruggles-Brise family at Spains Hall, Finchingfield. She remembered: When I was up at Spains Hall they had a servants' hall and they had a bench all down one side attached to the wall, all the lower girls sat there same as me and the kitchenmaid. The cook used to sit at the end and then there was the parlour maid and all the bit higher ones the other side. That was full, my goodness, There was a butler, a houseboy a parlourmaid, housemaid, between maid , cook, kitchen maid. I never went in the dining hall except at Sir John’s golden wedding. You should have been up there when they had the shoots. They used to have a butler brought in as well. For these shoots they had women come in. Well, they used to have two women in the week go up there to scrub and that. When
the shoots were on they used to take the lunch out and for all the beaters and the butler used to go with them and do the tables. They used to have a big room in one of the farmhouses and have their lunch in there. Then they would all come back to the hall for a bath and a meal at night. I didn't have to cook the meals. I had the housekeeper's room. I had to do my washing-up in there. The maids were all right. They nearly all came from away, they did have a few village girls now and again. At Brenthall I used to have to go up and light the fire in the nursery for the nurse and the baby to get up in the morning. The others, the bigger children, were in different rooms. That Guy, they used to try and make him tie his own shoes. He couldn’t and he used to cry so I used to do it for him. They didn’t know. They had a nurse and a governess with them. The late Connie Elsdon was in service at Wethersfield Manor. After I left school I went into domestic work. I left school at 13. I went to Nortofts for Mrs Byford and after that I went up to London with Lady (Harold) Flannery at Chester Place, in the middle of London near Hyde Park. I was what you call a tweenie. You helped everybody. You helped the nursery, you helped the dining room and you helped the cook. I loved helping the cook because I would be given a little titbit. I would do anything if they gave me a bun.		Garden boys at the Manor
Staff at Wethersfield Manor in 1914. Stanley, the butler, centre	I only came home once a year for a fortnight's holiday. I used to take Joan, their little girl, dancing. We used to go to dancing classes right through the London smogs. They used too be so thick you couldn't see. But I knew the way so well that I used to take this little girl dancing and, being very young myself, I used to take it all in while I sat there waiting for her and when we got back to where we lived she and I used to do the dances together. Thick fogs, made worse by smoke from coal fires of the time.
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