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From: "Lizzie Love" <>
Subject: Re: Parlour talk -
Date: Sun, 15 Jun 2003 20:38:21 +0100
References: <3EE829A7.8090000@virgin.net>


I'm not too happy about this site, Guy. Goodness knows where they got their
information ... or since they are a directory of firms selling period
houses, perhaps they think that having a drawing-room will help sell a
house. I'm mystified.

The examples they show at Beamish look like parlour/dining-rooms to me, and
one of them has a ledged and braced door with tongued and grooved boards and
an iron latch. Judging the scale from the fireplaces (small cast-iron with
tiled cheeks) I'd say a couple of these rooms are no more than 9 or ten feet
square. They are, at best, the homes of clerks and colliery surface workers.

This site also shows a ground-plan of a four-bedroom semi in Bromley, Kent
... front-room, back-room, kitchen and scullery. They call the front room a
*drawing-room*. From whom would the lady of this house withdraw? ... and if
she did ... who was washing the dishes and putting tomorrow's porridge on
the hob?

No no! drawing-rooms were for people with servants and a busy social life
... and the brass to pay for it. The semi-detached house shown was for
ordinary women, who maybe had a daily-woman or char to help with heavy work,
but mostly did their own housework.

Colliery and mill workers lived in terraces consisting of a front-room and
kitchen with two bedrooms over. I have just started reading William
Woodruff's *The Road to Nab End* and he says that some people called their
front room a parlour, and were laughed at for being pretentious. They
certaily didn't call them drawing rooms.

All in all, I find this web-site very misleading.

Lizzie


> This site might help
> http://www.bricksandbrass.co.uk/desroom/drawing/drawsochist.htm
> Cheers
> Guy
> --
> Wakefield, England
> http://freespace.virgin.net/guy.etchells The site that gives you facts
> - not promises!
>
> Archive CD Books have helped my research http://www.archivecdbooks.org
> http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~framland/CHURCH/church.htm
> Churches & MIs. in the Wakefield Area
>
> Mary Longman wrote:
>
> > this was quite fascinating, Lizzie, but it brings to me the question
> > regarding those prosperous people - what about the drawing room - or
the
> > withdrawing room? Where does it fit in and what are its origins?
>
>
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