My life below stairs

My wife had queried the need for my overnight stay at Ragley Hall, the Marquess of Hertford's stately pile in Warwickshire, where I was to pose as a domestic in an attempt to find out if the notion of service as portrayed in the new film Gosford Park still exists in the contemporary stately home. If it was insight into a life of household drudgery I was after, she had pointed out, why not follow her around the homestead for the day? But the Palladian grandeur of Ragley called to me, even if my time there was to be spent largely below stairs.

As the taxi ascended a steep drive several miles long, I eventually caught sight of what looked like Buckingham Palace run to fat. When I presented myself at the servants' entrance, instead of Helen Mirren with a clipboard, I'm greeted by a welcoming Sally Smith, the marketing manager for a house whose resources serve not just its owners but tens of thousands of paying guests who flock to the house, gardens, adventure playground, summer concerts, weddings, dog trials, classic-car shows and the like each year - all supported by a full-time staff of between 30 and 40 people. But instead of scurrying up and down the four separate back staircases carrying breakfast trays, freshly ironed copies of the morning papers or a glass of hot milk for her ladyship at bedtime, these people are taking bookings via the house's website.

Some things haven't changed, however, particularly the absurd accents of the aristocracy. Long lambasted for my plummy voice, I felt positively parvenu after two minutes on the blower to Lady Diana Beaumont, the Marquess's sister, before I left London. Her voice bore the unmistakable, almost consonant-free cadences that are the upper classes' and theirs alone. So affected am I by even brief telephonic exposure that I find myself purring something preposterously arcane, like: "Absolutely, I shall endeavour to get down there for 11, shall we say?" in conclusion, which provokes my eavesdropping wife into snorts of derisive laughter.

Before being shown to my room, I'm taken to the family's private apartments. Lord Hertford himself is away, taking a year's break with his wife and children in Brazil. Having lunch instead are Lady Diana and her husband Henry and their small daughter, who are staying there while the family is abroad, as well as her sister Lady Carolyn. The latter, still winded by a fall from her horse that morning, explains how appalled she is by a recent interview with Lady Victoria Hervey's sister Isabella, who boasts how useful her title is when it comes to getting tables in restaurants. "Never dream of ringing up and saying this is Lady Carolyn Seymour. Not on." (Perhaps inevitably, the surname turns out to be pronounced See-ma; but it's important to get these things right.) Lady Diana concurs: "Not fair. Full up. Go to another restaurant. Plenty in London."

Lunch has been cooked and sent up in the dumbwaiter by Clive, the family's private chef and, along with Martin the private houseman (who does everything from waiting at table to babysitting, cleaning to walking the dogs), the nearest thing the hall has to a servant in the Gosford Park sense of the word. Apart from Graham, the houseman in charge of security, nobody lives in, and today the attics, with their endless under-the-eaves bedrooms, are occupied only by bric-a-brac and the ghosts of servants past. The corridors offer an eerie perspective, both literally and figuratively, on days of old. It is here that I would have been put up for the night back in the 1930s, the period that Robert Altman portrays. And here, who knows, where a previous Lord Hertford's servants would come for a smoke after a gruelling day, or exchange gossip, or engage in a promising flirtation. Or, perhaps, walking along these passages, with their heavily varnished tongue-and-groove panelling and evocative aroma of old wood and encroaching damp, you might have heard the muffled sobs of an overworked scullery maid, alone in a cold bedroom, with another day looming of scouring pots and pans and cleaning grates. Now, though, all is silent, except for the gale-force wind, which whistles and rages through the attic and the basement but, as though itself conscious of social distinctions, leaves the state floors alone.

The old pulleys that would once have lifted kipper-laden breakfast trays to Lady X in the blue bedroom are now rusted and cobweb-covered. Now there is a lift, although it is wont to break down, often between floors. When Lady Diana summoned it the other day, the doors wouldn't open so she went off to turn the relevant switch. In her absence, the doors of course opened, and thus were the hovering Bruno, Pedro and Toffee, the three dogs whose barks and yelps echo through the house, carried aloft in comfort to their private quarters.

In the space of 24 hours, I got lost at least 20 times. It takes no stretch of the imagination whatsoever to picture all manner of things going on in the hall's hidden corners and secret cupboards. Indeed, can any of the parties be blamed? Above and below stairs, what opportunities these labyrinthine passageways and bookcases that were really doors must have presented.

My wife's grandmother, who enjoyed a good house party in her day - she particularly remembered the Scotch and contraceptives placed beside every bed at Buscot Park in Oxfordshire, home to the bachelor Lord Farringdon, and the white peaches served for pudding, brought hotfoot from the greenhouse by a footman, their plump flesh still warm from the sun - had an interesting theory about why domestic service died. It was, she opined, inevitable the moment numbers fell below a dozen. Once that happened, the flirtatious frisson upon which the whole edifice relied had gone; below stairs, she said, was like the workplace. The footman put up with a rotten job because the kitchen maid was giving him the glad eye.

As dusk settles at Ragley, it is time to help Clive in the kitchen, in a smart navy apron that is the closest Ragley gets to a uniform. I've done my best to muck in and look busy like a servant of yesteryear, but nobody's fooled; the gardeners, especially, see me coming a mile off. And the old distinctions have gone. Although, as I discover when picking my way through the etiquette minefield that evening, not all have been forgotten. Offering to pour a guest's whisky, Lady Diana's husband Henry shouts at me over his shoulder: "We serve vodka in those ones, actually." He says it perfectly amiably, but I still feel such a failure and quickly disappear downstairs through the green baize door in the corner of the room.

Review: Gosford Park