Ella Urquhart: A Warwick Castle Servant's Story (Part One)

You may have read about the Countess of Warwick’s artistic maids, but during the project to catalogue the Greville Family of Warwick Castle collection, we discovered a new servant story. This is the story of Ella, a young girl who was plucked from her home in the Scottish Highlands and sent to London to work for the Countess of Warwick.

Teaching Gaelic

In around 1876, Anne Greville (1829-1903), 4th Countess of Warwick, expressed an interest in employing a servant to teach Scottish Gaelic to her daughter, Lady Eva Greville (1860-1940). Nestled among her correspondence and bills was a small booklet, The Harp of Caledonia: A Collection of Popular Gaelic Songs, along with a couple of handwritten notes on the Gaelic language. Perhaps after living in England for 20 years, Lady Warwick wanted to re-establish a link to her Scottish roots; she was the daughter of Francis, 9th Earl of Wemyss (a title in the Scottish peerage) and had grown up at the family seat of Gosford House, near Longniddry in East Lothian.

A series of letters shows that Lady Warwick enlisted the help of her cousin Eila Frederica Mackenzie (née Campbell) to find a suitable young girl. Lady Warwick had been very particular with her request; she did not just want someone who could speak Gaelic, but rather one who could read and write the language too. After turning away several unsuitable girls, Eila’s mother-in-law Lady Mackenzie heard of a promising girl in the remote village of Gairloch.

Daughter of a crofter

Isabella, known as Ella, was the daughter of Hector and Catherine Urquhart. Hector was a crofter, a type of agricultural labourer, so Ella would have been used to a quiet life in the rural Scottish countryside. She was born in 1861, so would have been around 15 years old when Eila Mackenzie came to make arrangements to send her into service with the Countess of Warwick. The story of Ella’s life from this point on can be followed through a series of letters to Lady Warwick and her daughter, Lady Eva Greville (1860-1940).

Arriving in Warwick

Eila Mackenzie described Ella as looking ‘very clean, the lower part of her face is certainly ugly, but she has nice clear eyes that look straight at you & she seems intelligent, & very anxious to please.’¹ When they reached Inverness, Eila bought Ella a shawl as her jacket was ‘very thin for a night journey and the day was so bitterly cold.’ Ella was then deposited onto the train to London in the care of the guards. She arrived safely in London, but Eila was not impressed that she had to hear this from Lady Warwick, calling Ella a ‘stupid child’ for not thinking to write to her directly.²

Whether Ella would have had either the means or the inclination to write seems to have been somewhat overlooked. Bearing in mind the fact that Ella did not have her own shawl until this point, would she have had any money to spare to be able to write to Eila? Regardless, Ella was now safely in the Countess of Warwick’s employ.

References

¹ Warwickshire County Record Office reference CR1886/482/2/85

² Warwickshire County Record Office reference CR1886/482/2/86