Only One Candle Between Two!

Wickham Place is the London home of Lord and Lady Southgate, their children and staff. Located in fashionable Belgravia it is a fine Georgian terrace house.

 

Today we are below stairs in the kitchen, standing in front of Cook’s, great heavy dark wood dresser. It’s after eleven at night. Lord Southgate hosted a small dinner for some of the members from the House of Lords this evening: influential men whom he hopes to curry favour with in order to pass a private member’s bill regarding the city’s parks and gardens. Now that the dinner is done, the guests have left and the cleaning up done, Mrs. Bradley, known by most downstairs staff as Cook, can put her feet up and relax by the range. Cook has ordered her scullery maid Agnes to boil the kettle to make a pot of tea for her and warm some milk and make some coco for Agnes and the two housemaids Tilly and Sara. Suddenly her quiet reflection is broken by the shrill voice of Mrs. Blackheath the Housekeeper.

 

“Another candle! You were only given a candle last month! Do you think this house is made of money to furnish you with candles? I hope you girls aren’t reading those Penny Dreadfuls or anything else up there in your room!”

 

Cook opens her eyes gently and peers across to her dresser where Mrs. Blackheath, unkindly known as Mrs Blackheart by many of the lower staff, is placing candles into the servants’ candleholders that need replenishing. All the while she stares accusingly at her two charges Tilly and Sara, looking down her nose at them. Tonight, the Housekeeper is living up to her nasty nickname and Cook feels sorry for the two housemaids. Life in a big house like Wickham Place has little joy for maids, especially when you are under the care of such a penny-pinching woman as Mrs. Blackheath. Cook is glad that she is responsible for replenishing her own larder. When she must ask Mrs. Blackheath for items under her preserve, she is always questioned about her request, even when she asks for Sunlight Soap for washing or black lead for the range. Poor Tilly and Sara must share one candle between the two of them when they go up to their tiny bedroom up under the eaves of Wickham Place. Cook doubts that the young girls, bone tired after a day of hard graft, would have the energy to read a Penny Dreadful before going to sleep. However, Mrs. Blackheath keeps scrupulous records of stock in the house, down to every last candle end!

 

The Wickham Place kitchens are situated on the ground floor of Wickham Place, adjoining the Butler’s Pantry. It is dominated by big black leaded range, and next to it stands a heavy dark wood dresser that has been there for as long as anyone can remember. It has three shelves which are full of just a small selection of all the items used to prepare meals not only for Lord and Lady Southgate and their family, but for all the staff who run the London house. The dresser also has a pull out surface to put extra items on, such as the tea cups and Mrs. Blackheath’s box of candles.

 

This year the FFF+ Group have decided to have a weekly challenge called “Snap Happy”. A different theme chosen by a member of the group each week, and the image is to be posted on the Monday of the week.

 

This week the theme, “candle” was chosen by David, DaveSPN.

 

This tableaux is made up of part of my 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures collection. Some pieces come from my own childhood including the silver Victorian candlesticks and the 1:12 wax candle in the foreground, which I was given as part of my tenth birthday present and the two teapots which I bought from a specialist tea shop when I was in my mid teens. Other items I acquired as an adult through specialist online dealers and artists who specialise in 1:12 miniatures. There are also a few very special antique pieces on show here.

 

The shelves of the dresser are littered with a panoply of interesting everyday utensils and household brands that were used in the Edwardian era by houses large and small. Some have stood the test of time and are commonly recognised today, whereas others have not and are long forgotten.

 

The Victorian candlestick about to be filled for the maids is one of a pair which are artisan pieces of sterling silver made in England and are only 2 ½ centimetres in height and ½ a centimetre in width at the base. The brass candlesticks are the same height and are also artisan pieces made in England.

 

The box of Price’s Carriage Candles contains twelve artisan made wax candles like the one in front of the box and the two in the brass candles. The design of the box is Victorian. Price’s was established in 1830 and still exists today. They received the Royal Warrant to Queen Victoria after making Sherwood candles for her wedding. By 1900 they were the largest manufacturer of candles in the world, producing 130 differently named and specified sizes of candles. They supplied candles for the wedding of Princess Elizabeth to Phillip Mountbatten in 1947 and received the Royal Warrant of Queen Elizabeth II after supplying candles for her coronation in 1953.

 

The two floral teapots I acquired from a specialist high street tea shop when I was a teenager. I have five of them and each one is a different shape and has a different design. I love them, and what I also love is that over time they have developed their own crazing in the glaze, which I think adds a nice touch of authenticity.

 

The Art Nouveau brass cup on the left-hand side of the dresser’s workbench and the silver Art Nouveau cup, plates and funnel on the first shelf are dolls’ house miniatures from Germany, made in the first decade of the Twentieth Century. They are beautiful works of art as stand alone items, and are remarkably heavy.

 

The Macfarlane Lang & Co. Imperial Assorted biscuit tin is a 1:12 specialist miniature. The tin design is Edwardian. Macfarlane Lang and Company began as Lang’s bakery in 1817, before becoming MacFarlane Lang in 1841. The first biscuit factory opened in 1886 and changed its name to MacFarlane Lang & Co. in the same year. The business then opened a factory in Fulham, London in 1903, and in 1904 became MacFarlane Lang & Co. Ltd. In 1948 it formed United Biscuits Ltd. along with McVitie and Price.

 

Next to the Macfarlane Lang & Co. Imperial Assorted biscuit tin is a Cornishware white and blue cannister. Cornishware is a striped kitchenware brand trademarked to and manufactured by T.G. Green & Co Ltd. Originally introduced in the 1920s and manufactured in Church Gresley, Derbyshire, it was a huge success for the company and in the succeeding 30 years it was exported around the world. The company ceased production in June 2007 when the factory closed under the ownership of parent company, The Tableshop Group. The range was revived in 2009 after T.G. Green was bought by a trio of British investors.

 

Next to the Cornishware cannister is a box of Queen’s Gravy Salt. Queen’s Gravy Salt is a British brand and this box is an Edwardian design. Gravy Salt is a simple product it is solid gravy browning and is used to add colour and flavour to soups stews and gravy - and has been used by generations of cooks and caterers.

 

The Elkay Dutch Cocoa for Agnes, Tilly and Sara was an American brand which originated in Chicago. The Elkay Company still exists today, but no longer produce cocoa, or any foodstuffs. The label of the cocoa jar features a steaming cup of hot cocoa and a purity testimonial. Drinking coco before bed was often a blissful reprieve at the end of the day from the daily grind for many housemaids, scullery maids and other downstairs staff alike if you read some of the histories of domestic service that have been recorded.

 

The three artisan 1:12 miniature preserve jars on the right-hand side of the dresser’s work bench contain seeds, herbs and preserved lemons. I have many others in my collection including preserved nuts, apples, sweets and even cannisters of 1:12 size biscuits!

 

The little white jug next to the teapot in the far right of the photo is mid Victorian and would once have been part of a doll’s tea service. It is Parian Ware. Parian Ware is a type of biscuit porcelain imitating marble. It was developed around 1845 by the Staffordshire pottery manufacturer Mintons, and named after Paros, the Greek island renowned for its fine-textured, white Parian marble, used since antiquity for sculpture.

 

On the first shelf of the dresser on the left-hand side you will see two jars of marmalade. Golden Shred orange marmalade and Silver Shred lime marmalade still exist today and are common household brands both in Britain and Australia. They are produced by Robertson’s. Robertson\'s Golden Shred recipe perfected since 1874 is a clear and tangy orange marmalade, which according to their modern day jars is “perfect for Paddington’s marmalade sandwiches”. Robertson\'s Silver Shred is a clear, tangy, lemon flavoured shredded marmalade. Robertson\'s marmalade dates back to 1874 when Mrs. Robertson started making marmalade in the family grocery shop in Paisley, Scotland.

 

Bird’s Custard is also a common household name, although they produced other desserts beyond custard, including the blancmange mix next to the jars of marmalade. I actually ate Bird’s blancmange regularly as a child, and I still occasionally make blancmange from scratch as a treat dessert every now and then. It is quite old fashioned, and most people today have never heard of it. It was usually a nursery food or an invalid’s food as it is soft and uses milk as its main ingredient. It is quite gelatinous and is not unlike junket so it is easy to swallow. Edwardians had a fascination with gelatinous foods, with most dinners having at least one course at luncheon or dinner containing something suspended in aspic (an early version of jelly) and a jelly dessert. Edwardians were all about show, and to show food suspended in aspic became quite an art form, especially in the big hotels and grand restaurants of England and Europe. Bird\'s Custard was first formulated and first cooked by Alfred Bird in 1837 at his chemist shop in Birmingham. He developed the recipe because his wife was allergic to eggs, the key ingredient used to thicken traditional custard. The Birds continued to serve real custard to dinner guests, until one evening when the egg-free custard was served instead, either by accident or design. The dessert was so well received by the other diners that Alfred Bird put the recipe into wider production. John Monkhouse (1862–1938) was a prosperous Methodist businessman who co-founded Monk and Glass, which made custard powder and jelly. Monk and Glass custard was made in Clerkenwell and sold in the home market, and exported to the Empire and to America. They acquired by its rival Bird\'s Custard in the early Twentieth Century.

 

The little hand-painted dish on the first shelf, the dishes on the first shelf and the cups on the dresser’s work space were all acquired from specialist 1:12 artisans. All are hand-made, and this is most noticeable in the fine painting of the bowl, and the irregularity of the plates’ edges. In Victorian and Edwardian times up to the Second World War when domestic staff were still common, the staff would never have eaten off the crockery of their betters. Household staff crockery was usually plain white and would be what we would call everyday ware. It was cheap, mass manufactured pottery and more serviceable, whereas the master and mistress ate off fine porcelain which was often beautifully decorated and gilt. Cook has a slightly better blue and white Willowware cup and saucer as she was an upper member of the staff along with the Butler and Housekeeper. Maids, footmen, scullery staff, gardeners and boot boys were lower staff and would have had ordinary staff crockery.

Done