Minding the Manor, Mollie Moran
Minding the Manor, Mollie Moran
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Minding the Manor
The Memoir of a 1930s English Kitchen Maid

Author: Mollie Moran

Narrator: Veida Dehmlow

Unabridged: 10 hr 57 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 09/16/2014

Synopsis

Mollie Moran is one of the few people alive today who can recall working "downstairs" in the early 1930s before the outbreak of World War II. In Minding the Manor, she provides a rare and fascinating insight into a world that has long since vanished.



Mollie left school at age fourteen and became a scullery maid for a wealthy gentleman with a mansion house in London's Knightsbridge and a Tudor manor in Norfolk. Even though her days were long and grueling and included such endless tasks as polishing doorknobs, scrubbing steps, and helping with all of the food prep in the kitchen, Mollie enjoyed her freedom and had a rich life. Like any bright-eyed teenager, Mollie also spent her days daydreaming about boys, dresses, and dances. She cherished her friendship with Flo, the kitchen maid, dated a sweet farmhand, and became secretly involved with a brooding and temperamental footman. Molly eventually rose to kitchen maid and then became cook for the Earl of Leicester's niece at the magnificent Wallington Hall.

About Mollie Moran

Mollie Moran (1916-2014) grew up in Norfolk and was sent to London as a scullery maid at the age of fourteen. She left her employer in 1938 to marry an Irish airman, with whom she later ran a hotel in Bournemouth. When she was well into her nineties, Mollie still regularly hosted Scrabble parties and cooked for up to twenty-five people.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Caroline on November 15, 2017

Born in 1916, Mollie Moran gives us a wonderful insight into her childhood in the Norfolk countryside. When she is fourteen she goes on to get a job as a scullery maid on a large Norfolk estate, (part of that involved travelling up to London for 'the season'.) Later, in her early twenties she got a......more

Goodreads review by Fiona on January 13, 2018

What a wonderful memoir. And not just a memoir about working downstairs as a kitchen maid which the author Mollie Moran did, but also as a social document, recording and detailing political events happening at the same time. What I discovered when reading was that the author was close friends with F......more

Goodreads review by Lois on November 17, 2018

This was funny, interesting and light. I would highly reccommend this to fans of period shows from this era. Mollie very much put me in the mind of Daisy from Downton Abbey.......more

Goodreads review by MaryannC Victorian Dreamer on July 12, 2020

How I love this book, this was simply wonderful! A true life account of a young girl going into service in the 1930's as a scullery maid and her life's adventures along the way. This is the stuff that Downtown Abbey was based on, a first hand account of what life was really like downstairs among the......more

Goodreads review by Orinoco Womble (tidy bag and all) on May 30, 2016

This book is also published under the title Aprons and Silver Spoons: The Heartwarming Memoirs of a 1930s Scullery Maid. Neither one really does it justice. I really enjoyed it. Many years ago I read Margaret Powell's scullery-maid-to-cook memoirs; she and Moran are chalk and cheese. Powell resented......more

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