The Waterford Archaeological and Historical Society 2025 – 2026 lecture series continues at 8 pm on Friday, March 27th, when Dr Rachel Finnegan, will deliver a talk titled Upstairs, Downstairs: A Bird’s-eye View of the Chavasse Servants at Whitfield Court, Kilmeaden, from 1898 to 1913, in The Parnell Room, Granville Hotel, Meagher’s Quay, Waterford (Eircode X91 XH5R).
This lecture gives a brief account of the background to the Chavasse family – Judith Chavasse, née Fleming (1867-1935) of Newcourt House, Skibbereen, and Major Henry (Hal) Chavasse (1863-1943), who was born in Edgbaston but spent much of his childhood in Castletownshend, West Cork, and his early adulthood in South Wales. It then outlines the sources for our knowledge of the family, including a large collection of Judith's diaries that came to light in Co. Waterford in the 1980s, covering her life from her early twenties to her death at Seafield House, Castletownshend, where they settled in 1913 after leaving Whitfield Court, Kilmeaden; a single diary of Hal's for the year in which they moved to Whitfield; and more importantly for this lecture, Judith's "Record of Servants". The introductory section also describes Whitfield Court itself, including the circumstances in which the Chavasses found themselves living there. Having thus set the scene, the lecture discusses the relatively small staff of domestic and other servants engaged to work on the Whitfield estate between 1898 and 1913, namely the women and girls who worked for Judith in the kitchen, the dining room, the nursery, the schoolroom and more generally around the house; and the men and boys who worked for Hal in the grounds and on his model farm, as well as those he hired as coachmen and chauffeurs. It is fortunate that the Chavasse’s time at Whitfield coincided with the census of 1911, which provides important information on their resident servants for that period and allows us to compare the composition of their staff with that of other local gentry houses. However, they were not resident in Waterford for the 1901 census, as Hal was serving in the Boer War and Judith was staying in West Cork with her first child, Claude, and three domestic servants. The lecture is illustrated with photographs and portraits from the family collection and other relevant material.
Rachel Finnegan was educated at Trinity College Dublin, St Patrick’s College Maynooth, and the British School of at Athens. Her first job was at the Royal Irish Academy, after which she lectured for 20 years in Arts & Heritage Management at WIT (now SETU). At the end of 2014 she retrained to become a freelance academic editor and runs a company called Irish Academic Editing. She has written 11 academic books, mainly on 18th-century voyages to the Eastern Mediterranean, including 3 volumes on the travel correspondence of Bishop Richard Pococke, a nephew of Thomas Milles, Bishop of Waterford & Lismore. Her two most recent books are related to Judith Chavasse, the subject of her forthcoming lecture. The first (2024) is a biography based on Judith's diaries and the second (2025) is a collection of childhood memoirs composed by Judith and two of her sisters, Sue Fitzgerald and Henrietta Haythornthwaite. In her forthcoming book (2026), Rachel has returned to the subject of Eastern travels with a new edition of Lord Charlemont’s Turkish and Greek Essays.
