Where did the real power and influence lie in the great country houses of the past? Women's Editor Christen Pears reports on a new exhibition celebrating 300 years of the role of women.

WIVES and daughters, sisters and mothers, servants and mistresses. Contrary to popular belief, maintaining great country houses was never exclusively a male preserve. Women had a key role to play, very often determining the social, domestic and artistic identity of the huge households in which they lived and worked.

Mistresses, cooks, scullery maids and governesses were all vital parts of the daily routine and next spring, a groundbreaking series of interlinked exhibitions across seven of Yorkshire's greatest country houses will explore their lives and achievements.

"Running these houses was much more important than we had previously given credit for," says Christopher Ridgway, curator of Castle Howard and chairman of The Yorkshire Country House Partnership, the collaborative research project behind the exhibition.

"They may not have assumed some of the man's traditional duties like running the estate or deciding what kind of livestock the farm manager should have but they were bringing up children, running the household and entertaining socially, which was closely allied to political networking. These are important accomplishments and activities in their own right."

Entitled Maids and Mistresses, the exhibition will draw on a wealth of new research to explore life above and below stairs, examining the role of women as both decision-makers and workers. It will also present life in these establishments from a completely different perspective.

"We settled on the theme of women very quickly. It's a huge subject and in many ways an obvious one, but it hasn't really been done before.

"The idea of inter-linked exhibitions is new, possibly unique. It's so significant because it's seven individual exhibitions but, at the same time, it's a single project. Each of the houses will be playing to its own strengths and but we are expecting to see a number of links emerge between them. We're already seeing one or two but the crucial thing is to pull them all together so we can see the regional picture. The full understanding will probably not come out until the end of the year." says Christopher.

The exhibition will draw on exhibits ranging from great art collections to everyday objects such as recipe books and underclothes, as well as letters and journals.

Portraits and photographs are a quick and easy way to enter the world of these women but, as Christopher points out, they may only scratch the surface.

"There's a wonderful portrait of Lady Mary Howard, an angelic looking child, but letters from her mother say she was an absolute fiend. Portraits are silent when you view them on their own. It's not until you start looking at other things that the full story begins to emerge - and I think there is an endless stream of stories that will come out."

The exhibitions at each house will be supplemented by a series of events and activities, as well as educational projects and the exhibits will be accompanied by interpretative panels with more detail about the lives of the women associated with them - how they managed their households, how active they were in terms of politics, the arts and charity.

Visitors have an enormous appetite for stories about how life was lived in these enormous and extraordinary buildings but when it comes to women, says Christopher, most of them know very little.

"Even on a superficial level, we tend to think of country houses as male spaces. The men were the ones who went on grand tours and brought back artwork and they were the ones with the economic power to buy what they wanted but women actually had a lot of influence when it came to furnishings and decorative arts. When we realise that, we immediately begin to see the houses in a different light - as female spaces."

Each house has its own of important and interesting historical figures, women like Princess Mary at Harewood, daughter of George V, or the formidable and politically astute Ninth Countess of Carlise at Castle Howard. A recipe book belonging to the Fourth Countess has survived, showing just how much she was involved in domestic matters.

But the lives of the servants are just as fascinating. Country houses ran like machines, everyone with their own, precise function. Black and white photographs show how they dressed, a quick glance around the kitchen reveals how they worked. But they, too, have their own stories to tell.

Christopher says: "There is massive demand for these houses to be presented through their occupants and we are trying to say to people who think country houses are the same old thing that there are fresh ways of looking at them.

"We think of them as treasure houses, architectural masterpieces. We tend not to think of them as family homes but one of the appealing things about this project is that that we are looking at ordinary lives in extraordinary houses.

"These are aristocratic families but issues of birth, death, marriage, motherhood are no different than for other people. Their lives, in many respects, have so much in common with everybody else's and they reveal an enormous amount about social, political and economic history."

* Maids and Mistresses will open on Saturday, April 3, 2004 and will run until the end of October. The participating houses are Brodsworth Hall (Doncaster), Burton Constable (East Riding of Yorkshire), Harewood House (Leeds), Castle Howard (York), Nostell Priory (Wakefield), Temple Newsam (Leeds) and Lotherton Hall (Leeds).