What's in your wardrobe?

Recent posts have been themed around pests, infestations, vermin and how to keep them out of clothes. The Old House Museum is partly a Tudor house place. Later it was divided into tenement cottages for Sir Richard Arkwright, housing workers from his mill at Lumford in Bakewell. Eventually these cottages were condemned in the mid twentieth century, though one continued to be lived in until the 1960s. In the late 19th century a family called the Pitts lived there. Mr Pitt collected euphemistically named night soil, the contents of the earth closet toilets that were a feature of houses with no mains sewage. When the Bakewell and District Historical Society began the process of renovating and restoring the Old House they uncovered fireplaces and a secret room. At first it was thought it might be a priest hole, but the Gell family who had built the house were not Roman Catholics. Building historians identified this secret room as a garderobe. A garderobe was an inside toilet, usually with a drop into an earth closet. There are some at Haddon Hall which drained to the outside wall of the house, down the limestone bluff the Hall stands on. It was the height of luxury, and those who would have access to a garderobe would have some luxury items among their clothes and outfits. They knew that the smell of ammonia from these inside toilets discouraged clothes moths and insect infestations, so precious furs and silks were hung in the garderobe. You may have guessed the connection, a closet in a bedroom used for hanging clothes. This is the origin of the modern day wardrobe! You can still see the garderobe if you visit the Old House Museum.