Much of the time, the towering Georgian and Victorian terraced houses of Belgravia now have only servants living in them – their masters and mistresses are drifting around the world, from yacht to schloss to Park Avenue apartment, in search of pleasure or tax avoidance. Drive round the area at night, and it’s often only the lights in the attics and the basements – the servants’ quarters – that are on.

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The 20th-century culture of housewives doing everything for themselves – armed with an avalanche of labour-saving devices – was a brief blip in British history when servants went out of fashion. From the Middle Ages until the First World War, whole armies of traditional servants were employed in this country. One of the reasons the castles and country houses of Britain were so huge was that they were designed to accommodate a vast staff. When Sudeley Castle was built in 1442, there were two big courtyards: one for Lord Sudeley and his family; the other just for his servants.

For the next half a millennium or so, domestic servants were run of the mill, not just for peers of the realm, but also for the lower middle classes. In 1851 there were 115,000 women between 15 and 20 living in London and the suburbs; 40,000 of them were in service.

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