When Marlen House was divided into smaller households, forty-six keys remained on a board in the former steward's room. Some carried brass labels; others had scraps of paper tied to their bows. The labels were more informative than their number. They described a building organised by tasks that its new occupants no longer performed in the same way.
There were keys for the lamp cupboard, the west linen press and a store identified only as the second room beyond the stairs. Several opened more than one lock. A few labels named people rather than doors, suggesting that custody had sometimes mattered more than a precise account of where a key could be used.
Caretaker Elsie Venn tested the collection before any keys were discarded. She drew a floor plan and marked successful openings, then noted where a lock had been changed. Her work uncovered a cupboard whose key had long been regarded as lost. It had been hanging on the board under the name of a room that had acquired a different use.
Not every key found a door. Alterations had removed some locks, and others may have belonged to furniture taken away before the division. Venn resisted assigning an uncertain key to the nearest plausible label. A blank entry was less satisfying, but it did not leave a future occupant trusting a guess when a door needed to open.
The board was finally retained as an object in its own right. Its usefulness had changed from controlling access to describing an earlier household. Forty-six pieces of metal could not reconstruct the whole building. Together with their labels and Venn's patient tests, they showed how much of a house's history lies in who could get into which room.