Upstairs DOWNSTAIRS

A unique house in Wrexham provides visitors with a vivid taste of life in a grand country house, in no small part thanks to a tradition of photographing the servants…

- JANET GLEESON

What would life have been like if you were employed as a cook-housekeeper or a housemaid and spider brusher in a grand country house, and how different would that existence have been from that of the wife or daughter of its owner? Erddig, the seat of the Yorke family for nearly 250 years, answers these questions, reaching back in time to offer such an immersive sense of life upstairs and downstairs through the centuries, that it’s been dubbed the Welsh Downton Abbey.

‘What makes it special is that it’s such a complete country house,’ explains Susanne Gronnow, Erddig’s property curator. ‘Upstairs, the interiors are filled with furnishings by some of the finest makers in the 1720s – they were made for the house and are still here, having been nowhere else.’ There are also exquisite ceramics, among them a Delftware vase that came from William of Orange’s palace in the Netherlands via Hampton Court Palace. But it’s the belowstairs collection that really sets the house apart. ‘The servants’ archive is unique in its extent with portraits, poems and documentation that was kept or commissioned by the family,’ Susanne explains. And, yes, however unlikely it may sound, housemaid spider brusher was one of Erddig’s more unusual job titles.