Where the Word Came From — and What It Was For

The word parlour comes from the French parler, to speak, and that is precisely what the room was for. It was not a room for cooking, scrubbing, sleeping or darning. It was a room for conversation, and for being seen in. In Georgian and Victorian homes of every class, the parlour — or front room, or best room — was set aside for visitors. The family might eat in the back kitchen, warm themselves by the range, and live a whole life in three rooms at the back of the house. The parlour waited, dusted and cold, for callers.

That waiting is important to understand. The parlour was a performance space as much as a living space. Its condition told visitors what kind of household they had entered. That is why a family with very little money might still keep a piano, a china cabinet and a decent set of chairs in a room they barely used.

Visiting Day: Cards, Calls and the "At Home" Hour

Victorian and Edwardian calling followed a strict timetable. Calls were made in the afternoon, usually between three and five o'clock. A visitor left a card on a silver tray — folded corners carried meaning, and a card left in person rather than sent by a servant said something too. Households kept an "at home" day, printed on the card, when they were willing to receive. A call lasted fifteen minutes. Any longer and you were imposing.

Afternoon tea grew out of this world. The familiar story is that Anna, the seventh Duchess of Bedford, found the long gap between an early lunch and a late dinner left her with "a sinking feeling", and began asking for tea and light food in her rooms in the 1840s. Friends joined her. By the 1880s the habit had moved into the parlour and become an institution: thin china, a teapot kept warm under a cosy, cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off, scones with jam and cream, seed cake, and a tiered stand to hold the lot. The food was never the point. The point was the hour, the manners and the company.

Furnishing the Best Room

If you want to recreate a parlour, it helps to know what actually stood in one. The look was dense, upholstered and deliberate. Key pieces included:

• A fireplace as the focal point — cast-iron insert, tiled surround, fender, fire irons, and a brass poker or bell pull nearby.
• A horsehair or plush sofa, often painfully stiff, with antimacassars on the arms and back to protect the fabric from hair oil.
• A whatnot — the tiered corner shelf that held china, shells and small treasures.
• An aspidistra in a japanned pot, the plant that survived dim light and coal smoke better than anything else.
• Glass domes over wax flowers, stuffed birds or a piece of coral — Victorian ornament at its most earnest.
• A piano or harmonium, the surest sign that the household was respectable.

Walls were papered, often with a dado rail below and a picture rail above. Floors were covered with oilcloth or linoleum, then rugs. Chairs tended to be pushed back against the walls rather than gathered round a table, because the room was arranged for display, not for lounging.

The Decline of the Front Room

The parlour did not survive the twentieth century intact. The First World War removed a generation of young men and much of the domestic servant workforce with it. The Second World War brought requisitioning, bomb damage and a severe shortage of labour. After 1945, houses were built smaller and households had less help. A room kept solely for visitors began to look like a luxury nobody could afford.

Television finished the job. When sets became affordable in the 1950s, the family wanted to sit together and watch, and the only sensible place was the front room. The parlour became the lounge, then the living room. From the 1970s onwards, knocking through the back rooms to make one open-plan kitchen-diner became the standard renovation. In many terraces today, the old parlour survives as a dining room, a playroom or a bedroom.

Keeping the Spirit Alive

You do not need a Victorian terrace to borrow the best of the parlour. The principles are simple and still work in a modern home. Give one room, or one corner of a room, over to sitting and talking rather than screens and storage. Put the fireplace, if you have one, back at the centre. Use warm lamplight instead of a single overhead bulb. Keep the good china out on a shelf where you can reach it, rather than boxed in a cupboard — things you cannot see never get used.

Then bring back the hour itself. Tea at four, a proper pot, something small to eat, and no rush. The parlour was never really about furniture. It was about making time to receive people properly. That habit is worth keeping.