19/09/2026
We have a secret staircase at Norfolk House.
And after all these years, we’re only just telling you about it.
When Norfolk House was built, a grand Georgian home like this would have needed an army of people behind the scenes to keep it running.
Fires had to be built. Food prepared. Clothes washed and pressed. Rooms cleaned. Beds made. Horses and carriages looked after.
There would have been housekeepers, chambermaids, cooks, footmen and other servants working away while the family went about their lives upstairs.
And that’s where staircases like this came in.
Servants needed to be able to move quickly between the working areas of the house and the bedrooms above, without constantly passing through the main rooms used by the family and their guests.
At Norfolk House, our service staircase runs from the lower ground floor — where much of the work would once have taken place — right up towards the attic, where servants may have slept.
And it’s still here.
Today we’ve had to hatch part of it over because it is incredibly steep, has no handrail and, after a glass or two of fizz, could become rather more exciting than any of us would like.
We would never want to remove it, though. It’s part of the story of this house.
In fact, it explains something that has baffled quite a few of our guests over the years…
Why does our dining room have FOUR doors when two of them appear to go absolutely nowhere?
Now you know.
I sometimes wish these old walls could speak. Imagine the things this staircase must have seen over the last couple of hundred years.
And I wonder how many more secrets Norfolk House is still keeping from us…
