Posted by Adam Quinan on April 06, 2003 at 12:54:46 from 66.185.85.76 user Adam.
In Reply to: Re: BECKFOOT unmentionables posted by John Nichols on April 06, 2003 at 00:39:18:
John wrote:: Now it is highly unlikely that a building in the early 1930's had an indoor toilet, as a matter of fact my guess is that they had an outhouse possibly with a sanitary pan collection or a septic tank.
John, I was not around at the time (1930) but I am sure that all respectable English upper middle class houses would have had indoor plumbing by 1930, though you are probably right about a septic system in a country house like Beckfoot. My grandparents lived in a Tudor (or possibly) earlier farmhouse which had indoor facilities, but it was not on mains sewage and they had to have the tile bed re-done some time in the 1950s.
My other grandparents lived in a Regency house in a small country town where my grandfather was a doctor. When staying with them I slept in the attic which had been servant's quarters in earlier times (this was the 1960s). The house even had a backstairs so that the servant(s) didn't have to use the main staircase when going from the upstairs to the parlour. there was a electric bell push in many rooms which caused an indicator to show which one had been pushed in the parlour. I remember gettting into trouble for playing with it one day as my grandmother didn't have any servants and thought it was the door bell.
There was also a hatchway between the dining room and the kitchen to save having to walk a long way round with food. Would that help with anyone's conception of Beckfoot?