Falling in love with the plain country living ‘downstairs’ at historic Erddig house

A couple of weekends ago Mr Rigg and I, dog-less and fancy-free decided to take a day trip to Erddig house, a National Trust property near Wrexham that is renowned for its portrayal of the upstairs downstairs life.  It is a truly fascinating and beautiful place, one that I would recommend for a day out.

As well as the house, there is a lovely garden and stables with working horses, but I wanted to share what I was most interested by, which is the ‘downstairs’ quarters and the plain country living that I think is so beautiful. There was only one ‘upstairs’ room that I liked enough to photograph, and that was the nursery and adjoining (if I remember correctly!) bathroom.

You enter the house through the sculleries and kitchen, which happened to be full of things that I have collected from car boots sales – I should have very much liked to have a ‘supermarket sweep’ if given the opportunity!

To have shelves for my baskets…one day…

I thought this carved mould was so beautiful, the time and care that has gone into making it is incredible…

I have lots and lots of pots like these that I use for flowers, but I love this idea of brown paper and string to cover them – would have never thought of that! Anyone know what you can keep in them like this?

This little side room had a wooden dresser up to the ceiling, stacked with beautiful crockery – I particularly liked how the teacups were hanging up and have bookmarked this for a future kitchen.

You’ll also see how the drawers are labelled with vegetables and other store cupboard ingredients – I never realised things like that were kept in drawers.

I think this room was the butlers kitchen, but whatever it was there was so much I liked, from the muted natural colours and the painted woodwork, to the utilitarian but quite beautiful items within it.

This was one of a few rooms right up in the attic, so not technically ‘downstairs’ but still part of the servants quarters.  It was sparse but functional and with a few homely touches.

This was the children’s nursery, the one room from the ‘upstairs’ part of the house that I liked enough to want to take pictures.  I find the decor so refreshing compared to the plastic toy world that we occupy now.

I was particularly taken by the fabric on this blind in the adjoining bathroom – I think the pattern is lily of the valley, printed onto this gorgeous wintery grey blue fabric.

I am so frustrated that I can’t remember the name of these blue glass bottles – but basically they were hung outside each room either side of the door and were filled with some concoction that, if there was a fire, you threw one into the fire, it smashed and put out the fire.  In theory at least.  We were told by one of the house stewards they were about as effective as throwing water.

This was the heraldry room…

The gardens and grounds at Erddig are very pretty, ranging from manicured topiary, to apple orchards of long grasses, to lily covered lakes and floral borders.  It is really very pleasant to wander around…

I don’t usually share a lot of snaps of us here on the blog, in a funny sort of way we are quite private people (I guess that sounds pretty silly when you write a blog…about your everyday life…).  But we found a nice little building in the grounds with a bench, so took the opportunity to take a few pictures as we are both feeling happy and healthy.

Is anyone else a fan of this kind of ‘plain country’ living as I’ve so affectionately named it?

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