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A Different Perspective.. .The West Hyphen looking towards the Music Room, c.1920. Now the visitor's
entrance, the WestHyphen, when used as a sitting room, combined furnishings representative of several
generations ofRidgely family occupancy. The stacks of books to the left and right of the stairs include
bound volumes of the London Times Illustrated. These provided hours of educational amusement for the
Ridgely children. Hampton NHS collection.
Later, the west wing accommodated a part-time schoolhouse, and Hampton's first
bathrooms were installed here by the 1850s. The bathrooms had bathing tubs, water-
closets and sinks, all with running water supplied by a cistern and pump on the west side
of the Mansion. A cistern on the east side supplied water to the kitchen. In addition, there
were wooden pipes for running water which supplied spring water to the Mansion and
gardens. These pipes were first laid in the 1790s and later replaced with lead pipes in 1855.
Cellars
The stone cellars under the main block of the Mansion were used for storage and later
for the furnaces. There was a wine cellar, lard cellar, carpet cellar, apple cellar and a gen-
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