Historical documents rarely reflect servants’ voices. Get the below-stairs low down from Florence Wadlow, a kitchen maid who worked at Blicking Hall in the 1930s.

Her charming memoir ‘Over a Hot Stove: A Kitchen Maid’s Story’ is a must-read for fans of Downton Abbey and Upstairs, Downstairs, although such programmes didn’t impress Flo. When she died in 2013, The Daily Telegraph quoted her as saying: ‘They have got it wrong. They should have talked to people like me.’

Flo was born in 1912 in West Ham, London. Her life in domestic service began aged 16 as a kitchen maid in South Kensington. Rising quickly through the ranks, by 23 she was taken on as a cook for Lord Lothian, Blicking Hall’s last private owner, cooking for the Astors, Queen Mary and Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, who stayed at Blickling during the 1936 abdication crisis. Flo recalled his wife, Lucy Baldwin, tipping her a pound, nearly whole week’s pay in those days! When Lord Lothian was appointed Ambassador to Washington, Flo moved to cook for the Bulwer-Long family at Heydon, where she met her husband Robert Wadlow.

Blickling Hall is now a National Trust property and Flo’s fourth floor bedroom is recreated just as she’d have known it. Heydon Hall is a private home, but you can explore the immensely pretty village where Flo once walked with her beau. Stop for a pint at The Earle Arms or book a luxurious cream tea at the delightful award-winning Heydon Village Tea Shop.