Historic Kitchen Restoration

In the last ten years or so, an increasing number of houses open to the public have allowed their visitors below stairs to see, for the first time, the domestic offices which served the grander rooms above. Ham House, an elegant 17th-century country house on the banks of the Thames just west of Richmond Park, is about to do the same. Below the lavish state apartments on the ground floor lies a labyrinth of domestic offices. During the 1670s and 80s (when the house was enjoying its greatest prosperity, under Elizabeth, Countess of Dysart, and her second husband, the Duke of Lauderdale) these included a kitchen, two larders, a scullery, dairy, bake house and still-house, four cellars for beer and wine, the Usher of the Hall's Office, the servants' hall and a laundry. Unfortunately, these cannot all be opened at once, but the Victoria and Albert Museum, which administers Ham House, plans to have the kitchen and larder on view by next summer, along with an exhibition explaining how the house worked and displaying various curiosities of a domestic nature from later periods. In this article Caroline Davidson describes how she has set about restoring the most important domestic offices of all: the kitchen.