Below stairs at Arbury Hall: Sir Richard Newdigate and his household staff, c.1670-1710

This article reconstructs the experience of domestic service among the menservants and maids employed in a late seventeenth-century gentry household, that of Sir Richard Newdigate, second baronet of Arbury Hall in the parish of Chilvers Coton, near Nuneaton, Warwickshire. By correlating the remarkable 1684 'census-type listing' (by name, by age, by occupation, by relationship to household head) of the inhabitants of Chilvers Coton not only with the rentals generated as part of Newdigate's 'great survey' of his manors in 1681-4, but also with the account books in which Newdigate recorded the tasks performed by, and the wages and rewards paid to, each servant throughout the period 1678-1710, it is possible to ascertain the size, structure and participation rate of the household staff; the range of jobs undertaken and the skills thought requisite to perform them; and the relationship between work, remuneration and other types of reward among the domestic labour force.