Class hatred is not a term you hear much about these days apart, perhaps, from the more embittered sections of Left wing society.

If anything one might feel a twinge of sympathy for hard-pressed, cash-stretched owners of grand stately homes at their wits’ end busy trying to keep them afloat in the presence of a largely indifferent world.

I am fortunate to live in a former wool baron’s house where some of the architecture of a gloriously antique lifestyle still exists.

As well as a magnificent portico there are the copper-plated bell buttons to summon the servants though when I press them no-one arrives to do my bidding.

But after reading Lucy Lethbridge’s Servants: A Downstairs View of Twentieth-century Britain, I can fully understand why class hatred was once a vicious, seething cauldron.

The sheer drudgery of these people’s lives is unimaginable but the callousness is breathtaking.

Take for example the 9th Duke of Marlborough whose Blenheim home was almost beyond parody.

As well as insisting that all meals be served by a staff of eight he also ordered that each course consist of 17 choices.

But most ghastly of all is what happened next.

A disgusting bowl of all the slops or leftovers was poured into a large bowl and handed to the Poor.

As someone with a fairly fastidious palette I would not care to chomp my way through a gloop of soup, bones and pudding. But I guess they were simply grateful for it and wolfed it all down.

And if the meals for those down the bottom of the food chain was dire there was also the problem of poorly ventilated kitchens and sleeping in airless cupboards.

The people who owned these homes were the least progressive bunch imaginable.

Gas and electricity were bizarrely thought of as middle class so servants would not only be exhausted by the long, gruelling hours but often go to their beds half-frozen.

And although we can now enjoy the fascinating idiosyncrasies of these earls and dukes it can’t have been much fun tending to the reclusive Duke of Portland for example.

Some 90 indoor servants attended to his every need and he stipulated that a chicken must turn on a spit 24 hours a day in case he felt peckish.

The old order though could not keep up the act forever and it is famously said to have ended in 1945 after Clement Atlee’s Labour party won a landslide.

I have heard the amusing tale told of some young toff in his boater casually telling a station guard to take care of his luggage.

“Oh, no, that’s all over, now,” he replied.

Of course, class distinctions will always be with us and the success of Downton Abbey and other such period dramas attest to our continuing fascination with grand country houses and their inhabitants.

But fortunately the age of Runaway Mop Fairs where young women were hired if they could wash, bake and scrub are well and truly behind us.