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David Palmer the butler, Carol Cox the cleaner, and the house electrician. We have also had ones done of the woods department, the farms department and the building department, but there are still more to do. 73
     
    Whilst Holkham retains a working community, the large service areas of the original, eighteenth-century house are used now mostly for purposes other than their original ones, not least because fewer staff are needed, and most of them live in houses on the estate, rather than at Holkham itself.
     
    Through the ages, architects have taken different approaches to the problems of accommodating quantities of domestic staff in traditional country houses. With the modern trend for cleaning and maintenance staff to live elsewhere, much was done in the 1960 and 1970s to create more serviceable family apartments within the main house, with smaller kitchens where the families could cook for themselves, with or without help. 74 A picture of current attitudes emerges from the views of two architects who specialise in building new country houses or adapting older ones to comfortable modern life. They were asked to comment on what staff their clients tend to have and how much this informs the designs of their houses.
     
    For Hugh Petter, a partner of Robert Adam Architects, a firm that has built over one hundred new country houses in the past twenty years, it was ‘still quite usual to encounter a housekeeper, a nanny and a personal secretary. The smartest houses might well have a butler, a driver and one or two gardeners, sometimes a groom and a stable lad.’ The firm has often been asked to build a new house on an estate where the old house had been pulled down:
     
Then we might well be asked to design a new lodge or staff cottage, but these days more staff live out than in. I think people don’t want a life with hot and cold running staff, while staff themselves need their own private spaces in which to lead their own private lives. Most of our clients have a housekeeper, whose husband might do odd jobs or gardening.
     
It is still quite usual to be asked to provide a flat for the housekeeper, either in the main house, or maybe over the garage, so that when the family are away there is someone near by for security reasons. These are likely to be comfortable flats, well proportioned and bigger in scale than historic servants’ accommodation. In old country houses the family itself tends to colonise the old servants’ quarters, but in smarter houses there will be a nice family kitchen as well as a working catering kitchen for entertaining.
     
    Some features are persistent:
We are still designing quite large butler’s pantries for new houses, which are requested more than you might think and are effectively serveries. Laundries are often asked for, and these days usually sited on the first floor, so that laundry can be processed on the bedroom floor, saving a lot of carrying up and down stairs. There is still quite a strong desire to have a second staircase for staff, so they don’t have to go through the main rooms, especially when people are entertaining. We have also had requests for staff sitting rooms, often suitable for chauffeurs while waiting, and for offices for personal secretaries. 75
     
    Another architect, Ptolemy Dean, currently working on several new country houses, concurs:
     
All country house owners are concerned to have somebody living on site for security. Service accommodation has always been animportant part of the architectural expression of a country house, especially when you think of the work of Lutyens. I have recently designed a new house with a powerhouse, garages, and a self-contained staff flat in a new service courtyard. I am often asked to design staff cottages.
     
One thing is clear: there is no expectation of a string of servants’ bedrooms in the attics, while basements are generally used only for wine or services such as electrical plant rooms and laundries. The days of the