Maids and Mistresses
Maids and Mistresses
In 2004 Burton Constable participated in a series of interlinked exhibitions across seven of Yorkshire’s greatest country houses, in partnership with the Yorkshire Country House Partnership.
Titled Maids and Mistresses, this exhibition by then-curator Gerardine Mulcahy explored the lives of some of the colourful and highly individual women who helped shape the history of this great country house between the Elizabethan and Edwardian eras.
Careless Creatures or Forces for Change?
The role of women within the country house is often sidelined – these hidden figures are often seen as drifting listlessly through life accomplishing little. Even during their own lifetimes, the ladies of stately homes were often seen as lazy, selfish and overly extravagant.
However, a closer look reveals that the women were also working to manage their households, to care for their families (often heartbreaking at a time when infant mortality was high) and to support their local communities through patronising charities, helping with events and instituting or donating to institutions such as hospitals and almshouses.
Mary Barbara: A Life of Travel and Independence
We are fortunate to have in our collections many of Mary Barbara’s sketchbooks from her international travels as well as letters to and from her husband and family. This remarkable woman, who seems to have been remarkably free from the racial prejudices of her time and genuinely concerned about the local people of the various countries that her husband and herself inhabited, chronicled her time at home abroad closely.
Her marriage to her husband (and cousin) was clearly a love match formed from many years of affection. Despite a brief spell at home between 1831 and 1835, Charles decided in 1835 that he was ‘_tired to death of… idle life_’, and enlisted to fight in the Carlist war in Spain. It is a life a world away from the genteel and static existence in a stately drawing room often painted as being the norm for ladies of the English Aristocracy.
Education and Accomplishment: Beyond Needlework
Burton Constable can count some extremely well-educated women among its mistresses. Perhaps one notable instance is Winifred Constable, who was educated at the secretive Catholic school at Bar Convent in York during the 18th Century, where girls were taught subjects such as Hebrew, Greek, astronomy, philosophy, gardening, mathematics, Latin and other European languages.
To Be Continued…
The stories of the women who have inhabited Burton Constable can easily be veiled by circumstance and indeed by prejudice. Here at Burton Constable this is an area of research in which we still feel we have a lot to accomplish – and many exciting discoveries yet to reveal!
