30th August 2018 Down To The Basement Kitchens Holkham Hall

Hi Dear Folk,

And now to my favorite place to visit in these grand mansions, the kitchens.  My mum had an older friend Edith who had been in service as a young girl.  She was quite a feisty character and I remember one time she babysat for the very well to do family that I used to babysit for, the Bedingfelds who lived in our area, before he inherited Oxburgh Hall, also in Norfolk.

In any case to get to the point, one day one of the little girls caller her Glover.  Well Glover was her surname and that's what all servants were called when in service, just by their last name.  Well Edith soon set them right about that, "I am Mrs Glover to you and you are not to call me just by my last name."  Which was only right.  It's good we have moved on from those times.

What hard work it must have been, just look at those roasting spits.

Polishing all that copper.

Stopping for a gelato would have been a highlight for the Grand Tour Party, as they travelled through Italy during the hot dusty summer months.

In the early 18th century Naples was at the centre of the ice cream trade.  Street vendors sold ices from buckets to the ordinary people on the street, while the upper classes ate their's from dainty dishes in the ice cream shops.

Although ice cream had been known in England since the 1670's it wasn't until Italian confectioners such as Domenico Negri, set up a shop in the mid-eighteenth century that it became a popular treat amongst the wealthy.  Negri's shop in London's Berkley Square the "Pot and Pine Apple", which opened in 1757 evolved into the famous Gunter's Tea Shop.  Some 100 years later another Italian entrepreneur Carlo Gatti brought the delight of an ice-cream "penny lick" to the masses from his business in London's Little Italy.

A historic name to name an ice cream shop would be the Pot and Pine Apple, of course one would have to add a plaque with the significance of the name.

Not sure how healthy a penny lick would have been.

Christine