To continue your tour, return to the hallway between the Owners’ Bedroom and Bathroom. Then pass through the open doorway to your right. Continue across the hall into the Servants’ Wing.
Just across the hall from the Owners Chamber, we enter a simple corridor, which leads from the head of the back stairs to two bedrooms and a bathroom once occupied by Lucknow’s housemaids.
As you make your way along this hallway, look closely at the wallpaper on either side. Sections of this blue and white wallpaper, which depicts stylized Japanese pine boughs, are original and now over 110 years old. As part of ongoing restoration work, badly damaged sections of this wallpaper were replaced with digital reproductions. The best preserved areas were kept intact for comparison. Can you tell which is which?
Based on the sizes of the rooms in this wing, its likely that three women would have shared this space—one in a private room, and two sharing the other, larger room (which is not currently open to visitors as it houses our museum office). Notice the interphone just outside the bedrooms. Domestic staff living in the household were effectively always on call. This interphone ensured that the Plants or their guests could reach a member of staff any time, day or night.
If you have not reached the Maid’s Room, press pause and resume this recording when you are ready.
With their large windows and views of the lake and mountains, the servants’ accommodations here at Lucknow Mansion are much more pleasant than the stuffy attic chambers provided for servants in many similar houses at that time. These spaces received ample natural light and good ventilation. Both rooms had radiators tied into the home’s central heating system and electric lighting. Based on what we know about Tom Plant’s treatment of his factory employees and considering the pleasant appointments and labor-saving technologies here at Lucknow, it seems like the Plants cared about the well-being of their staff and made efforts to design comfortable spaces for them to live and work.
This small, but private, room was likely reserved for the head housekeeper. The furniture in this room is not original to the Plants, but appropriate for the era and use. The wallpaper in this room is not an exact match, but is very similar to the wallpaper installed here in 1914. Before you leave, notice the difference between the wallpaper in this room and that in the hallway. The vibrant pattern found in the corridor, down the stairs, and into the Servants’ Hall was likely chosen to help enliven the servant areas of the home. The servants’ bedrooms, however, featured more reserved patterns – better suited to creating a restful atmosphere.
