Getting an electrical supply was only one half of the story. Not for nothing did an advertisement for a firm specialising in the installation of electrical equipment for country houses claim that its system 'can be carried out without damage to the fabric of the buildings or to the decorations'. An owner also had to have the building wired - easy enough in the case of a new house, or a major restoration, but not a task to be undertaken lightly if it involved chasing out rococo plasterwork or cutting a channel through a baroque mural. The guides at Stanford Hall in Leicestershire used to tell the story of how in the 1920s Lord and Lady Braye were baffled by the prospect of having to run cables through their long ballroom without wrecking its delicate eighteenth-century stuccowork. Then someone had a bright idea: they prised up a floorboard at one end and dropped a dead rabbit into the void; then they prised up a floorboard at the other end and unleashed a ferret, with a string tied to his collar. When the ferret had managed to negotiate the joists and reach the rabbit, the string was used to pull through a cable and hey presto! the problem was solved.
- Adrian Tinniswood, The Long Weekend: Life in the English Country House Between the Wars, London, 2016, p.151-2.
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