upstairs, downstairs
Kate MacDonald
I spent years as Lady’s Maid to Mrs. Dunsmuir and her daughters, seeing to their needs in grand Craigdarroch. Like many servants, history remembers relatively little about my life, but if you know where to look and listen, the Castle itself speaks of how those of us ‘below stairs’ lived and worked.
listen
Victorian society was highly stratified into upper, lower and middle classes. Craigdarroch was home to individuals whose great wealth was predicated on the efforts of the working class, but also the workplace of a number of servants. The Castle was designed to keep these two spheres separate, and yet close enough that the servants were always on hand to assist the family.
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