Tony Grant at 3 Queen Square, down the road from the Jane Austen Centre
Tony Grant, who writes posts for Jane Austen Today and London Calling, stands above the “area”, the servants entrance that sits below ground and in front of town houses built during the Georgian and Regency eras. A wrough-iron fence separated the upper level from the lower basement level, which was sunk partly below the street. Windows in the work areas gave the servants a view of the people walking along the sidewalks.
Wherever these town houses were built, servants and delivery people used the lower entrance. The “area” also contained a coal vault used for storage.
The "area", or the way down to the servant's quarters
A collier unloaded coal from a cart directly into the coal vault. This practice prevented dirty coal sacks from being dragged through the house. Coal was dumped down a chute via a coal hole. The coal would then be used for fires or the kitchen stove. (Gaelen Foley) The design of the coal hatch, which was locked from the inside, would vary from house to house. Coal holes were in use from the early 1800s to the middle 1900s, when the Clean Air Act made the burning of coal illegal. (Knowledge of London)
Coal hole, Bath, England
So much coal was burned in 19th century London (in 1800 over one million London residents were burning soft coal) that “winter fogs” became common.
An 1873 coal-smoke saturated fog, thicker and more persistent than natural fog, hovered over the city of days. As we now know from subsequent epidemiological findings, the fog caused 268 deaths from bronchitis. Another fog in 1879 lasted from November to March, four long months of sunshineless gloom. (London’s Historic “Pea Soupers”)
Jane Austen's World 
Interesting post.=) Thank you Vic. Now I know who was really responsible for global warming. It isn’t us 21st century folk but the upper-classes of the 18th century!
If I recall correctly, it was mentioned, in What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew by Daniel Pool, that a family used to burn a tonne of coal everyday in their townhouse residence in winter. Imagine that!
That was a lovely book anyway, gives all the facts and fun of regency england, refering to all the classics of the period on the way. I had no idea what Mrs Bennet meant by a special license till then.=D
Thanks for the post, Vic. I actually wonder about such things. I always thought such entrances were in the back of houses, which could be deuced inconvenient.
My grandparents’ house in West Virginia had a coal room that was used until the 1980’s. A coal truck would come every winter and had a long chute that would dump coal into their coal room which they burned in their furnace.
A Christmas Story, a movie my family watches every Christmas Eve, shows the family dealing with the “clinkers” that use of coal involves. I’m wondering what Regency/Victorian families did when the coal “clinkers” occurred.
I loved reading What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew but was frustrated with the title’s implication that Charles Dickens’ thoughts were more important than what Jane Austen ate. The book was a good book and provided info pertinent to Jane Austen readers. Also a good reference is Georgette Heyer’s Regency World. It gives lots of info that Jane readers would benfit from.
My only quibble with that book by Daniel Pool was that he rarely made the distinction between Regency and Victorian customs, jumbling the two. Thank you for your comments!!
Vic
Interesting. How many servants would Mr. Darcy have? I wonder how busy the servant’s entrance would be at Pemberley.
Really Angelic
I have just stumbled upon your blog- and I’m so happy I did! I love learning about different eras, and this blog is a veritable treasure trove! Thank you for taking the time to build up such a source of knowledge!
I was often in London when I was a boy even though I lived in the country. One of the chief differences from now is that all the buildings were black. Over the years since coal fires were banned, they have mostly been cleaned. I remember the smog too. It killed thousands of people who already had respiratory complaints. The railings outside these houses were mostly removed during WWII because of the need for scrap metal for the war effort. Just as housewives were encouraged to donate their aliminium (using the British spelling!) saucepans for use in building aircraft.
The coal hole covers (known by enthusiasts as ‘opercula’) were mostly round and of a bewildering number of designs. I used to take rubbings of them. The coal-cellars extended under the pavement (sidewalk) and their roofs were arched for strength. Thus, the coal could be dropped straight into the cellar. The coal was carried in heavy burlap sacks and dumped into the coal-hole one at a time by the coal-men, who were always quite black from the dust. They also sometimes used a contrivance like a chute so they could dump the coal straight off the lorry (truck!). I also remember coal-carts drawn by horses.
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Great post. I always like to look into the areas when I am in Britiain. I stayed at a B & B similar to this in London this past summer in Gower Street, part of the Bedford estate. We ate breakfast on that lower level. So interesting.
One thing to note, wrought iron railings in the Regency were painted green, to look like copper, or a teal blue. Not black. I believe you can see one of these colours at Apsley House.
Great information, Vic! I’ve always enjoyed scenes in period mysteries where the police who had the cheek to appear at the main entrance are directed by a haughty servant to the servant’s entrance.
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Many of the homes in the Fan (in Richmond VA where Vic lives – I live in Ashland) have beautiful coal doors which are a little bit bigger.
I grew up outside of Boston MA and I took my grandmother to Quincy Market in downtown Boston for lunch one day. She loved the restaurant but remembered it as the place where her mother used to order her coal and shopped for her meat and vegtables every week. She also remembered how dirty everything was from the coal. How the times change!
[…] also has published several posts about his trip on this blog: Going to Bath With Jane Austen and The Servant’s Entrance to Regency Townhouses, for which he supplied the photographs. He has already contributed a post about Milsom Street for […]
[…] also has published several posts about his trip on this blog: Going to Bath With Jane Austen and The Servant’s Entrance to Regency Townhouses, for which he supplied the photographs. He has already contributed a post about Milsom Street for […]
Elizabeth Gaskell, who was a writer of the Victorian age, wrote the novel “North and South” in which the characters
suffered from the bad air in a textile mill town……
Very interesting article. Thanks por sharing it!