You mustn't miss taking a couple of hours touring the Shugborough Servants' Quarters, preserved just as they were centuries ago, complete with a Servants' Hall.

Meet Mr Crisp, the butler, and Mrs Stearn, the head cook, in the Victorian Servants’ Quarters. Both firmly believe it is still 1876. Mr Crisp will be glad to show you his Brewhouse, still brewing beer today, and tell you how eight pints of ale a day were part of the servant’s wage at Shugborough.

The head cook is Stearn by name and stern by nature. She keeps a tight reign on her kitchen and no wonder with so many frivolous and flighty young maids to keep an eye on. Make sure your hands are washed and your nails clean, before she takes you into her domain dominated by a large working range and row upon row of copper pots and jelly moulds. Here she has many 19th century gadgets from the ice cream maker and lemon squeezer to a potato ricer and a floor washing donkey.

Washdays in the laundry produce a flurry of activity by our blue and white uniformed laundry maids.as piles of linen are washed in the copper, scrubbed in the wooden tubs, rinsed, wrung out and dried, then ironed using flat irons The real smell of history can be experienced outside too, and we advise that you don't wander too close to the Servant's Latrine in the courtyard unless you have a laundry peg on your nose!!