Posted by Laurence Monkhouse on April 09, 2003 at 17:51:14 from 62.252.32.6 user Laurence_.
In Reply to: Re: BECKFOOT layout - good grief!! posted by Duncan on April 09, 2003 at 17:15:35:
Could there not have been a passage along the axis of the kitchen extension leading to the posh rooms at one end and the kitchen door at the other giving access to the yard, pigeon loft, coach-house/garage etc. The kitchen would be on one side of this corridor and the scullery and pantry on the other. Cook would then quite naturally be carrying the crockery across the passage without any need to go outside.
I know quite a number of old Suffolk houses with this sort of corridor arrangement but the old Lake District houses I know are all farms, where the kitchen is the central room where everything happens - cf Swainsons' in Chapter IX of Swallowdale and I bet Holly Howe, Dixons' and Tysons'. Beckfoot was clearly a Victorian upper middle class house, still fairly new in 1930, and had no need to follow the farm layout, but I bet everybody but the GA finished up informally in the nice warm kitchen from time to time - Nancy and Peggy certainly did.