New girls started in the kitchen as scullery-maids doing the washing-up, scouring the kitchen floor and furniture with sand, and preparing vegetables. After one to two years service they could be promoted to under kitchen maid, carrying out the cook's orders. Even when they graduated to kitchen-maid life was very hard; they had to get up at half past five in the morning to black the grate, clean the flues and light the fire. Many had to return home because the life was too hard, some even died.

It was my job to scrub the large kitchen floor once a week. I got up at four in the morning and worked for three hours, until seven. Then I had to start my other work. Two more hours were needed in the afternoon to finish the floor. In the morning I had a candle to see by. I moved the candle, together with the pail, as I cleaned each piece of floor. The kitchen looked so nice with the shiny coppers on the shelves – two hundred of them – white cloths on the tables and the floor so clean.

Every morning the minister from St. Martin's Church in Stamford would come on his bicycle at 9 am and take the morning service. St. Martins was the family Church. The minister got sixty pounds a year for that. The Marquis would read the lesson. The bell would toll just before 9 am and the staff had all to be in their seats, according to their position, before Lord and Lady Exeter and their family came in. The family sat in the front row; the men servants sat on one side and the maids on the other. The head servants sat behind the family. The service lasted about twenty minutes. This style of living had remained unchanged from the time of the first Lord Burghley but it ended when the Second World War came…
Bertha Adams Johnstone.