Exploring the First Electrical Houses

The Story of Electricity in the Home

• Cragside

  

  Start here!

  Watch the videos to unlock the other houses…

  Exciting Electricity!

  Cragside is a large country house in the North of England. It was the first house to have electric lightbulbs!
  At that time electrical technologies were very new and experimental.

  Mr. Grey, the butler at Cragside, will tell you all about how the owner, Lord William Armstrong, used electricity,
  and what happened when it went wrong!

  Enter the house

• Standen

  

  Fashionable Fittings?

  In 1892, Margaret Beale and her husband James, a lawyer in London, wanted to build a new house in Sussex for their large family – they had seven children!

  When deciding how to light their new home, they chose electricity. Come and meet Mrs. Beale to find out why...

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• Lotherton Hall

  

  Masters, Mistresses and Maids

  The Gascoigne family at Lotherton Hall in Yorkshire installed their electricity in 1903, but men and women often had different ideas of what electric lights should look like.

  And what effect did electricity have on the servants? Bertha, one of the maids at Lotherton Hall, will tell you what she thinks...

  Enter the house