I started cooking family meals myself at about age 11, and have been doing it ever since. I wished there might have been a bit more depth-not dishing dirt, but a few more tales of her misadventures as a beginning kitchenmaid cook. She also moved around too much, spending little more than a year in most posts until she got married-and in those days married women weren't expected to remain in service unless their husband was the butler or something.Ī light, fast read. No dissing on the great and the good to be found here-Wadlow is the essence of the 'family retainers' of 19th and early 20th century fiction, though down in the kitchen she was too far from the action to live vicariously through her employers. A shorter version of this article, which includes audio clips of Flo talking about her experiences at Blickling Hall, can be viewed here on the Eastern Daily Press website.Very short, very sweet. You can see a newspaper article about Flo in the Norfolk Heritage Centre:ĮDP p.1-2 “Farewell to Flo, the queen of below stairs” Illustrated article reporting death of Flo and giving some details of her working life. In 20, Bob Carter interviewed Flo Wadlow as part of Blickling Hall’s oral history project – you can hear Flo’s interviews here and here. Hard copies of the photographs of Flo can also be viewed at the Record Office – FX 347/1/1-7. Flo died 9 January 2013.įind out more: You can view photographs and portraits of Flo at the Norfolk Record Office – click here and search for ‘AUD 27’. Lord Lothian had asked Flo to cook for him in Washington, but instead she went to cook for the Bulwer-Long family at Heydon in Norfolk, where she met and married Robert Wadlow, and had two sons.įlo and Robert retired from Heydon to Fakenham in 1998. In this article, she recalls cooking for the Astors, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin and Queen Mary.įlo left Blickling in 1939 when Lord Lothian was appointed Ambassador in Washington.

She lived on the fourth floor of the house. She began her working life aged 16 as a kitchen maid working in South Kensington, and at the age of 23 was appointed cook at Blickling Hall by Lord Lothian – the last private owner of Blickling. wrote the book ‘Over a Hot Stove: A Kitchen Maid’s Story’ about her life in domestic service. Florence (Flo) Georgiana Wadlow ( née Copeland), cook and author, was born on 8 December 1912 in West Ham, London, but was later taken to live in Wells-next-the-Sea with her siblings and mother.

Over a Hot Stove by Flo Wadlow