The kitchen was not a place where design details were considered important to a home owner, but to the housewife, the cook, and the chef de cuisine of a large hotel, its layout and equipment were of the utmost importance. In the 1907 edition of Mrs. Beeton’s Household Management, noted that the requisites of a good kitchen were:
1. Convenience of distribution in its parts, with largeness of dimension
2. Excellence of light, height, and ventilation
3. Easy of access, without passing through the house
4. Walls and location so arranged that the odours of cookery cannot spread about the house (the Victorians and Edwardians had a phobia of kitchen smells!)
5. Plenty of fuel and water, which, with the scullery, pantry and storeroom, should be so near the kitchen as to offer the smallest possible trouble in reaching them.

The issue of sanitation was also one of importance, and it was advised that walls be made of white glazed tiles and floor coverings of oil-cloth and linoleum. However, this varied depending on the architecture of area–for example, flags of smooth stone were cemented together to form a smooth floor in the north of England, the kitchen floor usually consisted of unglazed red tiles in the Midlands, and on the east coast, floors were frequently laid with red or yellow bricks. Kitchen fixtures were simple and utilitarian, and a well-constructed sink of either wood lined with zinc, stoneware, or lined with cemented tiles were recommended. A large work table was the most important article of furniture, and the drawers at each end contained the cook’s tools, such as knives and spoons, and small utensils and implements in constant use. The last, but by far the most important of the kitchen requisites was the kitchen range, or kitchener, which was used for cooking, heating water, and so on. The kitchen range was a range, either open or close, that was fixed in its place with brickwork, the kitchener was a range entirely independent of its surroundings and stood on four legs, and the gas range or stove was similar to the kitchener, but was, of course, run with gas. Oil stoves and cooking by electricity were also popular options, though the latter was incredibly expensive to run.

A kitchen in tip-top form always contained a full array of utensils. There were the stewpans and saucepans of tin, copper, brass, enameled iron, and wrought steel; the boiler for boiling large joints, hams, and puddings; the digester, a small stock pot; the stock pot itself; the braising pan; the double or milk saucepan (a small bain-marie); steamers; fish-kettles; fish fryers; the frying pan; the bain-marie; the dripping pan; the gridion; and the dutch oven. Other must-have utentils were weights and scales, a mincing machine, steak tongs, knives, a colander, a pestle and mortar, a chopping board and bowl, preserving pans, sieves, coffee and pepper mills, baking dishes, tartlet pans, vegetable cutters, an egg poacher, freezing machines, water filters, refrigerators, etc.

To commence with one of these minor expenses, but an all-important one in its way, the floor of a ball-room. The drawing-rooms or drawing-room of a house is, in town, the room usually converted into a ball-room, save in those stately mansions which boast of an especial ball-room or picture-gallery of noble proportions, wherein these festive entertainments are held; in these handsome apartments the flooring is kept in a highly-polished condition, and only requires a little extra polishing on the occasion of a ball being given. The flooring of many a London drawingroom now also presents a polished surface, parquet flooring being so much in vogue; but an ordinary flooring, even in those houses that are of recent build requires to be thoroughly put in order by the aid of a carpenter, all the unevennesses of the surface to be planed, and the boards prepared for polishing. The cost of this is simply the workman’s time, which may be either three days or three hours according to the size of the rooms and the condition of the boards.

…With regard to the number of seats placed in a ball-room, if the room is a very spacious one, it is usual to place settees or rout-seats around the walls and in the recesses of the windows and in other available spots.
When the accommodation of a house admits of it it is usual to fit up one smaller room as a drawingroom; but when dancing takes place in both drawing-rooms, and there is no third room at command, then an extra number of rout-seats are provided in the ball-room, on the landings, and in the tea-room.

A few peers were in possession of large houses (Devonshire House, Spencer House, Stafford House, Londonderry House, etc), but most of society made do with elegant town mansions on or around the Grosvenor Estate in Mayfair in neo-Georgian, neo-Flemish, or neo-Elizabethan styles designed by such architects as Sir Ernest George, H. O. Cresswell. Detmar Blow and Fernand Billery, Eustace Balfour and Thackeray Turner, Sir Robert Edis, and various members of the Wimperis family. Though the return of the Liberal Government in 1906 slowed the flurry of building, many of the small Georgian houses in the area were demolished and rebuilt with Edwardian splendor between the years 1911 and 1913.

The town mansion profiled in this piece was designed by Ernest George and his partner Alfred Yeates on Charles Street, off Berkeley Square. Based on the floor plan, the house was constructed mostly for reception purposes, with the obviously less important bedrooms for the owners and maids’ reached by a secondary staircase (not shown) to the second and third floors. The house boasted up-to-date fixtures, with electricity throughout the entire house, a serving lift, and speaking tubes for the owners to speak with the servants.

The great country houses and the homes of the wealthy were full of rooms. Rooms for eating, rooms for sleeping, rooms for business, rooms for sport, and so on and so forth. A few weeks ago on Word Wenches, Nicola Cornick discussed the historical concepts of privacy, and “privacy and status being inextricably linked.” The existence of the boudoir, which was a room set aside for the exclusive use of the lady of the house, was another facet of how the privileged lived. Public rooms, such as the breakfast room, morning room, sitting room, drawing room, or parlour, could be found in most aristocratic and upper class houses, but a home which also boasted of a boudoir was de rigueur amongst the aspiring middle classes.

A lady’s boudoir was essentially her own private study, where she could “retire to write letters, plan menus, embroider, read or just rest on her chaise-longue to overcome a tiresome headache.” According to Elsie de Wolfe, in her seminal book on interior decoration, The House in Good Taste:

The boudoir should always be a small room, because in no other way can you gain a sense of intimacy. Here you may have all the luxury and elegance you like, you may stick to white paint and simple chintzes, or you may indulge your passion for pale-colored silks and lace frills. Here, of all places, you have a right to express your sense of luxury and comfort. The boudoir furnishings are borrowed from both bedroom and drawing-room traditions. There are certain things that are used in the bedroom that would be ridiculous in the drawing-room, and yet are quite at home in the boudoir. For instance, the chaise-longue is part of the bedroom furnishing in most modern houses, and it may also be used in the boudoir, but in the drawing-room it would be a violation of good taste, because the suggestion of intimacy is too evident.

…[I]t is really sitting-room, library, and rest-room combined, a home room very much like my down-town office in the conveniences it offers. In the early morning it is my office, where I plan the day’s routine and consult my servants. In the rare evenings when I may give myself up to solid comfort and a new book it becomes a haven of refuge after the business of the day. When I choose to work at home with my secretary, it is as business-like a place as my down-town office. It is a sort of room of all trades, and good for each of them.

…In a small house where only one woman’s tastes have to be considered, a small downstairs sitting-room may take the place of the more personal boudoir, but where there are a number of people in the household a room connecting with the bedroom of the house mistress is more fortunate. Here she can be as independent as she pleases of the family and the guests who come and go through the other living-rooms of the house. Here she can have her counsels with her children, or her tradespeople, or her employees, without the distractions of chance interruptions, for this one room should have doors that open and close, doors that are not to be approached without invitation. The room may be as austere and business-like as a down-town office, or it may be a nest of comfort and luxury primarily planned for relaxation, but it must be so placed that it is a little apart from the noise and flurry of the rest of the house or it has no real reason for being.

However, as the 20th century dawned, and the English discovered the delight and convenience of bathrooms via luxury hotels, new or updated country houses, and ocean liners (and were alerted to the health benefits of modern sanitary plumbing), an up-to-date bathroom became de rigueur for anyone with pretensions to fashion, or at the very least, desirous of guests who looked forward to a Saturday-to-Monday at an otherwise ancient country seat.

According to Houses and Gardens by Mackay Hugh Baillie Scott:

In the development of the modern bathroom there is therefore no precedent in the tradition of the house, and in the average modern dwelling it will be well that the suggestion of spotless cleanliness and practical efficiency should be its salient characteristics. The floor and lower part of the walls of tiles, the bath and basin of white enamel with no pipes enclosed, with no dark corners to harbour dust and dirt, and the art of the bathroom as expressed in useless and dirt-concealing patterns rigorously excluded—such a scheme will, perhaps, represent the best that is possible for the average household.

…The bathroom should be so placed that the plumbing is reduced to a minimum, and the whole system is as simple and compact as possible, free from possible damage by frost, and capable of repair in all its parts without interference with the structure of the house. The quality of mystery has its artistic value in the house, but in the matter of plumbing it will probably only be appreciated by the plumber.

The modern bathroom was neatly and uniformly tiled, with porcelain fixtures, and marble wainscoting. Of the fixtures, the simplest bathrooms featured a toilet, a lavatory with bowl (the sink), bathtub, and mirror, whereas the most luxurious added a needle show, a fixed bath, heated towel rails, and other exquisite details to this room. The earliest bathrooms added to country houses or town mansions were usually converted linen closets, but by the mid-1900s, architects, and those who commissioned their services, considered the bathroom a room just as worthy of individuality and space as a bedroom or sitting room!

Lest you commend our Edwardians for their progressiveness, it must be admitted that the impetus for simplifying the home and increasing the adoption of vacuum cleaners, telephones, electric ranges, and so on, was due to the “Servant Problem.” The number of domestic servants employed in Britain reached its peak at the start of the 20th century and went on a steady decline until the start of WWI as the working classes became less inclined to become servants. Another facet of the so-called “servant problem” was that of mobility: no longer did servants remain in one household for their entire working lives; if they found a better situation, they were apt to hand in their notice and move on, which made retaining good “help” quite difficult for many households. Nevertheless up until 1914, many wealthy and/or aristocratic Edwardian houses continued to employ a full staff of servants in a manner that had grown quite anachronistic.

To return to the subject of interiors, fads and fancies were, as with all things of this period, entwined tightly with class. The taste for ostentation was fostered by a desire to create an aura of gentility. Clerks and assistants making £100 per annum poured over the catalogues and periodicals written to help these first generation professionals shake the grime of Manchester or Leeds off their heels and decorate their suburban cottages in a manner befitting a “gentleman.” This generally meant “fussy decorations, thickly furnished rooms and surfaces crammed with knick-knacks,” as well as the piece de resistance–a piano–which was also covered with potted palms, bric-a-brac, and other items. However, this taste was shared by people as high up as the royal family, particularly Queen Alexandra, who always traveled with her entire collection of knick-knacks, photographs, needlework, letters, and books.

Others also using their homes and interiors to move up the social ladder were Britain’s nouveaux riche and millionaire plutocrats. They could not compete in ancestry, but they could compete in luxury and they “knew their entree to Society lay in their money and in their entertainments…when the highest in the land accepted their hospitality and shot their pheasants, they knew their investments had paid off.” This was also true of new millionaires in American society, and art dealers like the Duveen Brothers made their own fortunes helping social aspirants to the plunder of impoverished European aristocrats.

The homes of Society, or rather the homes decorated by fashionable interior designers, differed greatly from the homes of the middle classes. For one thing, they had rooms that existed solely for entertaining, and for another, they could afford genuine antiques, or at least excellent copies of Sheraton tables or Louis Quinze chaises. The self-conscious middle-class had to muddle along as best they could, and were usually at the mercy of furniture dealers most of whom were eager to cash in on ignorance and anxiety over what was and what wasn’t fashionable. Ironically, as the era progressed and the tenets of the Arts-and-Crafts Movement became more prevalent, the homes of the upper and middle classes were virtually indistinguishable. Ultimately, the Edwardians lived in houses of varied styles and varied taste, and this week I will take you through various points of interior design and rooms!

Further Reading:

Edwardian Interiors by Alastair Service
The Opulent Eye: Late Victorian and Edwardian Taste in Interior Design by Nicholas Cooper