Loathe to waste a weekend even when the weather is foul, we took ourselves for a day trip to a neighbouring National Trust country house, the beautiful Craigside. Even to a somewhat jaded country house visitor like yours truly (“What? Another historical kitchen with historical copper pots? Yawn!” Craigside offered enough unusual and quirky details to set my imagination going.

For one thing, being a relatively new house, belonging to a family that made its fortune in local industry, it had some technical features that rarely belong in my Victorian spanking fantasies.

There was, for example, a lift: it would take a maid from the cellar/scullery, via the kitchen, to the upstairs corridors. It had been specifically installed to ease the maids’ work, which I thought was very decent of the owner.

Of course, the new technological toy would be irresistible to the young maids. Too often the butler would catch them going up and down in the lift on insignificant errands, wasting their time. Finally, his patience would run out, and he would announce that the next girl fooling around with the lift would receive a birching in front of all of the servants.

The girls would take this to heart, and do their utmost to avoid capture. They would play with the lift only when the butler was busy with the master or about his duties on the other side of the house. Two of the maids would decide to have a couple of trips up and down when they thought the butler was asleep.

A grave miscalculation, that. The butler’s room was directly next to the lift shaft, and the girls’ delighted giggles would carry perfectly through the void, even if they were careful not to stop on his floor. He would meet them in the scullery once they’ve had enough, frowning meaningfully.

Even before he said a word, they would know that nothing in the world would save them from the impending birching.

Another fine artefact in the contemporary Craigside is a sketch on the wall, and the bottom of the staircase leading to the plunge pool. The pool was in use only by me, which probably explains the risqué little picture.

It shows a Roman soldier, sword in hand (symbolism, duh) kneeling beside a cage. The cage is inhabited by a scantily clad young lady, who is weeping and stretching her hands out towards him through the bar.

I didn’t notice a name for either the picture or the artist, but have had a fine few minutes trying to decide how the pretty girl could possibly have ended up in a cage, with her Roman loved on the outside. I’m still not sure what happened there, but I enjoyed creating a small traffic jam at the bottom of the steps while I studied it in detail.