There’s always a lot of costume dramas and historical TV shows on the air. The new series of “Upstairs, Downstairs”, the immensely popular “Downton Abbey” and of course, older series such as the original “Upstairs, Downstairs”, “Jeeves and Wooster” and “Lord Peter Wimsey”. Add to this movies such as “Gosford Park” and so-forth, and it seems that film and television producers can never get enough of the “good old days” of servants, bells, starched collars and telegrams delivered on silver trays.

The natural habitat of such shows always alternates between the English country manor-house and the terraced London townhouse, both locales with plenty of space to accomodate the goings-on both above and below stairs. But given that a lot of these shows take place in a time-period almost out of living memory, what were all the rooms that were central to this way of life? Of masters and servants? What were their functions? And why did you have so many rooms?

Here are some of the more well-known rooms that you might come across when watching a period costume drama set in a large house or an aflluent townhouse in the Victorian era or in the first half of the 20th Century. This posting will cover some of the more obscure rooms that you might find mentioned in movies, TV shows or old books. They’re are not presented in any specific order, so don’t try to find any! The more common (and obvious) rooms aren’t included.

The Drawing Room

No costume drama would be without its drawing room. It’s unthinkable! But what is a drawing room?

Despite the name, it is not a chamber meant for painting, writing, drawing or any other kind of artistic pursuit.

The drawing room comes from the word ‘Withdrawing’. In large, formal households, the drawing room is where people would withdraw to, after dinner or other substantial meal, for quiet conversation or relaxation. In most houses, the drawing room did double-duty as the general living-room for entertaining or receiving guests and visitors. On formal occasions, parties might be held in the drawing room.

The Morning Room

The morning room is the chamber in a house with multiple rooms, which was typically used during the early hours of the day (hence the name ‘Morning Room’). It was any reception-room built with the windows facing east, so as to make the most use of the morning sun. The room most commonly shown in the TV series ‘Upstairs Downstairs‘, is the morning room.

The Library

What a library is, is rather obvious. It’s where books are stored. In times past, books were significantly more expensive than they are today. Don’t forget that it was only until after the Industrial Revolution of the 1800s that books could be mass-produced by steam-powered printing and binding-presses. Prior to this, books were laboriously printed, cut and bound by hand, making them significantly more expensive than they are today. Any house with a significant collection of books would store them in their own room, the library, where they could be read in comfort and returned once reading was finished, to prevent them being lost. In some libraries, books were locked in glass-fronted bookcases to prevent damage and theft. The library might do double-duty as the study or office of the house because of easy access to reference materials and information. Particularly large libraries might come equipped with a specially-made set of library stairs.

Library stairs ranged from simple folding stepladders (that might or might not also double as stools), to long ladders on casters, affixed at the top to a rail that ran along the top of the bookcases, or they might literally be a set of movable stairs on caster-wheels:

A set of antique library stairs, with casters for moving them around the library and accessing high shelves

The Long Gallery

The gallery was the long passageway inside many large houses that date back to the medieval era. It would be the main corridor that would connect one or more wings of the house and was often brightly illuminated by large windows on one side (and possibly, on either end). Because Long Galleries could be rather boring if all they were, were connecting passages, some rich folks tried to dress them up a bit by hanging pictures on the walls. This gave us the modern “Art Gallery”.

The Larder

Ah, the larder! It’s where Mrs. Patmore and Mrs. Bridges put all their food. It’s the place where the kids in the Famous Five and the Secret Seven go to pinch all the choicest leftovers before going off on their adventures. It’s the magical room which kids (and if Jeeves and Wooster is to be believed, Tuppy Glossop) go to steal food from after midnight for a little nibble.

But what is a larder?

First off, a larder is not a pantry.

A pantry is a room or a large store-cupboard where bread and baked goods are stored. It’s cool and dry and free of vermin.

A larder takes this one step further. In essence, a larder is a cold-store. A specially-designed, specially-constructed room (or in some cases, building), which is made to be as cold as possible. Larders are built of stone to keep in the cold. Good circulation to keep out the heat. And with shelves and ceiling-beams with hooks to keep the food away from the vermin.

Before the days of effective, electrically-powered home-refrigerators, the larder was where you stored all your perishable foods such as dairy-products (milk, cream, cheese etc) and meat and poultry, such as sausages, meat, fish, steaks and any leftover food from dinner.

Although the residential icebox did exist at the same time, you have to consider that ice wasn’t accessible in every part of the world, all-year-round. Or even in every part of a particular country all year round. So homes without ice-based refrigeration (or for homes for which such refrigeration was impossible or too impractical and expensive), the larder was their fridge. Effective electric fridges of the kind we have today didn’t show up until the 1930s.

The Scullery

The Scullery is the domain of the scullery maid. Said maiden being the lowest-ranking of the female servants in a wealthy household. The scullery is the washroom. In larger houses, the scullery and laundry might be two different rooms (one for dishes, one for clothes and linen), but in smaller houses, the scullery did double-duty as the wash-up room for the silverware, glassware, China, kettles, pots and pans, and as the laundry for towels, bedsheets, clothes and undergarments.

The Butler’s Pantry

A ‘pantry’ is the room in which bread is stored. Originally, it was the domain of the ‘pantler’ or the servant in charge of bread (from the Latin ‘Pannus’; ‘Bread’). The butler’s pantry has nothing to do with bread. Or food.

The Butler’s Pantry was the domain of the butler. The head of the servants. In the pantry were stored such things as the family silverware and silver-cleaning implements and chemicals. Just understand, please, that the family ‘silver’ was a lot more than just knives and forks. Silverware could include ANYTHING made of silver. Candlesticks. Trays. Serving-trolleys. Tureens. Platters. Jugs. Cups. Saucers. Cake-servers. Cake-stands. Gravy-boats. ladles. Chocolate and coffee-pots. Milk-jugs. Cream jugs. A wealthy family might have a small fortune of silver stored away down in the servants’ quarters. And all of it had to be locked in the Butler’s Pantry, under the watchful eye of the Butler. Every single piece that went out had to be accounted for, and every single piece that went back had to be checked. If so much as a single teaspoon went missing, then the ENTIRE house would be searched for it. And the servants would be locked outside while the search happened!

So the pantry would house the silver-cupboard, the butler’s bedroom and private quarters, as well as important keys and important documents such as account-books, the silver-book and the wine-book, all of which had to be checked and updated regularly.

The Servants’ Hall

The servants’ hall is the main room for domestic servants in a wealthy household. You see it in ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’, in ‘Downton Abbey’, ‘Gosford Park’, and it’s mentioned in other TV shows such as ‘Jeeves and Wooster’. It must be a pretty important room. But what is it?

The servants’ hall is the break-room. It’s the room where servants would eat their meals and spend leisure-time. It’s the room where most of the work was carried out as well. In some houses, the servants’ hall was a separate chamber. In smaller houses, the kitchen might double as the servants’ hall.

The servants’ hall was the domain of the unfortunate Hallboy. The hallboy was the lowest-ranking male servant. He had the unenviable task s of doing all the heavy labour. Carrying coal. Firewood. Cleaning the servants’ hall and doing just as much housework as any of the female staff. Because he was the lowest of the low in the male servantry, the hallboy might not even have a bedroom. If he didn’t, he’d sleep in the hall as well!

The main panel of servants’ bells (which connected through wires and cables to the bell-pulls in the rooms upstairs), might be located in the servants’ hall or in the kitchen, where there would always be at least one person to keep an eye on the bells.

The Ballroom

The ballroom was the chamber reserved (in the largest of houses) for formal dance and parties (balls). In smaller houses, the drawing-room might double as the ballroom. Specially-built ballrooms came with their own dancefloors and musician’s galleries, where orchestras or bands could perform to project the music around the room, but keep out of the way of the party-guests.

The Parlour

The parlour is a reception-room in a house with multiple reception-rooms. Often, it was near the front of the house and was the room in which visitors would be shown into when they arrived. It comes from the French word ‘Parler‘ (‘to speak’). So it was quite literally the ‘speaking room’, or the room where you could engage in friendly discussions and conversations.

The function of the parlour changed a lot over time. These days, the parlour is a bit like the sitting-room or living-room in a modern house. In older times, when doctors still did housecalls, the parlour was also the room where funerals were held if there was a death in the household. This gave rise to the term ‘funeral parlour’.

The Nursery

The Nursery was the domain of the Nurse and her assistant (if she had one), the nursery-maid. The nursery was the room where young children and babies were looked after. In wealthy households, the lady of the house would hire a professional child-rearing nurse to take care of her newborn children if the mother couldn’t do it herself. For the sake of safety, the nurse and/or the nursery-maid would sleep in the nursery (or in a room next door) at nights to attend to the babies if they cried or woke up at odd hours.

The Gun Room

It’s pretty obvious what’s stored in here.

Found in large country manors where the masters of the house enjoyed hunting and hosting shooting-parties, the gun-room was the chamber which contained all the household’s firearms. It was a large, secure, vault-like room which was kept locked for obvious safety reasons. Firearms like shotguns, rifles, and their ammunition, accessories and cleaning-materials were stored here. As firearms could be extremely expensive, the gun-room was kept under lock and key to prevent theft just as much as to prevent injuries and death.

The Billiard Room

Billiards, Pool, Snooker and 9-Ball were all very popular during the Victorian era. And in a number of great country houses, an essential chamber for the gentlemen to retire to after dinner was the billiard-room. These rooms were of necessity, large chambers with plenty of space to move around the billiard-table. Apart from the table, the room would have the snooker scoreboard, a list of rules, a rack for the cues and cabinets and cases for the balls, the racks, the blocks of cue-chalk and possibly, spaces and cabinets for storing and playing other games. Traditionally, billiard-balls were made of elephant-tusk ivory. This made billiards almost exclusively, a game for the wealthy. It wasn’t until the invention of the first plastics in the early 1900s that billiards and pool started being played by the middle and lower classes.

The Smokehouse

Depending on the people who lived there and location of the estate, a large manor house might have a smokehouse on the premises. In larger estates where the land might be used for farming and the rearing of cattle and sheep, the smokehouse was essential.

In the days before modern food preservation, the smokehouse was where joints of meat, poultry, fish and even cheese, would be smoked. The food to be smoked would be placed in a special container or rack (called a smoker) and a fire would be lit underneath it. The smoke rising from the fire would dry, flavour and preserve the food above it. Different woods are used to provide different tastes to the food.

Once smoked, dried and possibly, salted, food might be stored in the smokehouse for a couple of weeks or even up to a year or more, before it would have to be either eaten, or thrown out.