Warter Priory, Yorkshire, circa 1904.  Demolished 1972.
Postcard from the collection of the author.

It's hardly any wonder why Warter Priory is gone.   With nearly a hundred rooms -- and over thirty of them bedrooms -- imagine the work it would take to keep it all going.  Before some of those time-saving gadgets we have nowadays, like electricity and central heat.  And dishwashers.  It's exhausting just to think about.

Lord Muncaster sold Warter Priory in 1878 to Charles Wilson, the Hull shipping magnate, subsequently made Lord Nunburnholme in 1906.  He died here in 1907 (incidentally, his grandson the subsequent third Baron Nunburnholme was born in 1904); Lady Nunburnholme maintained the estate until 1929 when it was sold to the Hon. George Ellis Vestey, second son of the first Baron Vestey who had been raised to the peerage in 1922 for services rendered to the nation during the war.

[Vestey "had ostensibly rendered great service to his country in war by placing his cold storage depots at the disposal of the government free of charge.  In fact, the company had been paid, he had moved his meat business to Argentina to avoid paying Biritsh taxes, and English people had thus been put out of work" (Cannadine, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy, p. 317), but I digress.]

In fact it took a village full of cheap labor to maintain the great Victorian and Edwardian country houses like Warter Priory.  Then,  as William Lanceley recalled in his memoir From Hall-Boy to House-Steward (1925), cited in Jeremy Musson's Up and Down Stairs, (2009):

The Great War undoubtedly upset service and this is not to be wondered at by those who know the servant question.  The war called for hands to help, and many servants responded to the call.  The work they were asked to do was a novelty to them, the pay was big and they had short hours, hundreds being spoilt for service throught it.  It made those who returned to service unsettled.

Unsettled indeed.  The Great War wasn't any day at the beach, but there's no question it opened the eyes of many young people to the bigger world beyond the servants hall.  A disinterested work-force wasn't the only factor in the demise of the great country house lifestyle, of course, but it certainly had an unhelpful effect. 

After all, who hasn't felt at times that there has to be more to life than cleaning and cooking and doing laundry?  I don't know about you, but I can see the fate of Sisyphus in a sink full of dirty dishes.  And so there are weekends like this one when I say, chores be damned, let that rock roll down the hill without me, let the dust gather, let the dirty clothes pile up, I have better things to do than worry about a spotless house.  

On the other hand, sometimes nothing cheers me up like ironing sheets.  Go figure.