Information for the servants of the house

NEXT TO THE KITCHEN in our family home in Hampstead Garden Suburb, there was a wood framed bell board. It consisted of a set of circular windows, each labelled with the name of a room in the house. There was an old bell button in my bedroom. If you pressed it, a pendulum hanging behind the circular window labelled for my room would begin to swing in the bell board. Had we had domestic servants, a servant would have heard the bell ring, then looked at the bell board to see which room’s pendulum was swinging, and then attend to whomever was in that particular room.

Part of the bell board at Ightam Mote

I was reminded of this antiquated bit of domestic equipment when I saw a similar one at Ightam Mote, a lovely old mansion owned by the National Trust.

Our house was built in 1908. This was during the era when these bell boards were popular. Although we did not have servants at home, earlier occupants most probably did.

When our daughter was much younger, she had an elderly babysitter called Bridie. Before WW2, Bridie worked as a domestic servant at a house in Golders Green. She told us that she had to wear uniforms: one during the daytime, and a different one in the evenings. I never asked her, but I would not have been surprised if that house in Golders Green also had a bell board.

My wife remembered that her family home in Kolkata had a similar bell board. There were servants in the house, but to discourage laziness, her parents had the bell in her bedroom inactivated.