![]() ![]() She started as a kitchen maid and ended this part of her life as cook at Blickling Hall no less, just before the Second World War – at the amazingly young age of twenty-three. It is an experience she would not have missed, despite the hardness of the work, the long hours for little pay, and the often spartan accommodation. Where there were restrictions on what she was allowed to do, she saw these as part of her employers’ caring role, especially for the young girls in their charge. She would not hear a bad word spoken against the families whose paths crossed with hers whilst in domestic service. ![]() By her contact with and proximity to them, Flo felt ‘elevated’ herself. Flo regarded it as a wonderful opportunity to live in beautiful surroundings, employed by people who, in some cases, were at the very centre of world affairs. Her career in full-time domestic service was mainly in the 1930s, and the life she so vividly recalled now seems to us as some distant period of history, so markedly did things change after the Second World War. This book is dedicated with love to my late husband, Bob, and to all my familyĪ lovely portrait of Flo in the late 1930s, probably aged about twenty-fiveįlo Wadlow was an amazing lady by any standards, and something of a Norfolk legend in her own lifetime. ![]()
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