Travelling the World 8 - The Peaks District and Chatsworth House
Saturday 26/10/24
We say farewell to Scotland and take off from North Berwick in bright sunshine, heading south for the Peaks District and the town of Chesterfield in England where we’ll be based for the next two nights. The highlight is going to be a trip to Chatsworth House.
Once again, we’re skirting the main roads for a bit and the navigator takes us on a very scenic drive along the cliff tops past Bass Rock and Tantallon Castle before hitting the motorway that takes us south towards Newcastle and beyond. We pass by the Torness Nuclear Power Station near Dunbar, a very square concrete building right on the coast. Curiously there doesn’t appear to be any big power line infrastructure going into or out of the station - perhaps they are underground for security reasons.
(By John - I took the photo, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=58564397) (Advanced Gas-cooled Reactors … 1 × 595 MWe … 1 × 605 MWe … it was commissioned in 1988. The power station is expected to be shut down in 2028, prior to defuelling and then decommissioning)
We pull off the motorway and stop at a town called Darlington for lunch - there’s lots of parks and autumn colours on display. The weather is remarkably warm today.
Once again the threat of the parking inspector hangs over us! The pay and display machine wouldn’t accept a credit card, and with only a one pound coin between us our eating time is limited. The parking inspector is patrolling the street when we emerge from the cafe and we make it safely back with just a few minutes to spare. Parking fines must be good business for local councils!
We make it to Chesterfield just on dusk after a pretty uninteresting drive down the motorway, except for avoiding the maniac motorists driving at crazy speeds!
Our accommodation is on the top floor of a strange looking building on Wharf Street. It’s OK but is squeezed into some very strange shapes, and the staircase up is incredibly steep and narrow. Again we have a tiny ensuite bathroom that requires some dexterity to manoeuvre around in but it’s warm and dry - what more could you ask for? Well, as it turns out some decent sized towels that don’t feel like sandpaper - they’re very worn and tiny and definitely not up to Ruth’s expectations!
We walk into the nearby town centre for dinner and find a Turkish place (the Divan) where we get an excellent feed and some proper takeaway focaccia bread. It’s Halloween weekend so lots of adults are out in costume. They take Halloween very seriously over here with decorations (some good, some bad) everywhere.
We pass Chesterfield’s famous twisted spire - a very strange thing indeed. It was apparently built twisted (records say construction started in 1234 AD) but over the centuries the spire has also started to lean.
There are many stories about why the spire is crooked as a google search shows ...
In 1994, it became the UK's only representative in the Association of the Twisted Spires of Europe; of the 72 member churches, it is deemed to have the greatest lean and twist.
We get a laugh from one possible suggestion about why the spire is so twisted - if you believe the stories there can’t be too many virgins in Chesterfield!
… the more mocking version has the church being so surprised to see a virgin being married, whether groom or bride, that its spire turned to look at the betrothed, becoming stuck
…. and that should another virgin ever marry in the church, the spire will return to true again.
Sunday 27/10/24
I’ve come down with a lurgy - not feeling too bad but a bit miserable and slow, particularly on the keyboard. On the plus side the sun is still shining!
We’re off to do the nearby stately home Chatsworth House, the home seat of the Cavendish family and the current 12th Duke of Devonshire. It’s not inexpensive so thanks to our tour guide Beth for booking and paying for the tickets. Ruth and Beth are keen to visit as it’s also the location for Mr Darcy’s home ‘Pemberley’ in a Pride and Prejudice film - if you are into Jane Austen, you will understand the link.
If you want to know more about the history of this place, I do suggest you follow the link above but for a quick rundown (thanks Ruth) the current house has its origins with Bess of Hardwick (one of the most powerful women in Elizabethan England) who married into the Cavendish family. She persuaded her then 2nd husband to buy what was Chatsworth Manor in 1549, and they started building a grand home on the site.
The house has had many additions over the centuries with the family being rewarded for supporting the claim of William of Orange and Queen Mary to the throne. The then 4th Earl of Devonshire (William Cavendish) was made the first ‘Duke of Devonshire’ in 1694 for his efforts. He undertook a major rebuilding program at Chatsworth in the hope the new king and queen would visit but they never made it to enjoy the grand state apartments he created. We get to see them instead!
Beth is going to do a special photographic edition of this house as she took lots of wonderful photos and can make some comment on the objets d'art and objets de vertu. See a separate Chatsworth House 8.1 edition for more pictorial highlights.
There’s a traffic jam just getting near the main entrance which has us a bit surprised as it’s no longer peak tourist season. Obviously though people are keen to get out on a Sunday morning, especially when the sun is shining. Lots are just walking the extensive parklands and gardens with their dogs - yes once again there are dogs everywhere except inside the ‘house’ itself! Our tickets get us into the car park but already the crowds have built up and we are directed to park in the outer grounds. There’s a very earthy smell of manure when you open the car door as there’s lots of sheep grazing around the house and you need to tread carefully!
There is a fascination at the beauty, ostentation, craftsmanship and artistry of this place, but the bigger question is the society that, over centuries, has allowed this extraordinary build-up of wealth within one family. It is certainly well beyond a commoner’s dreams!
Chatsworth is still held in the family under the control of the current 12th Duke (and Duchess) of Devonshire. Not that there weren’t some near misses over the years. Apparently the sixth Duke, known as the bachelor Duke, nearly blew the lot in the mid 1800s without the restraining hand of a good wife! He was extravagant and loved entertaining and is the one responsible for the purpose-built marble sculpture gallery which he delighted in showing off to his friends! They say a dour cousin inherited the title and had to claw back the debts by selling off some property.
Death duties were (and still are) the cross that these aristocratic families and owners of stately homes must bear. It was Debo Cavendish (Deborah, one of the famous Mitford girls and then Duchess of Devonshire) who in the 1950s recognised the need for the buildings to make a living and set about opening the house and grounds to the public for commercial use. It’s clearly a “nice little earner” today as big crowds make their way around. It must also be a good source of employment for the local community as there are staff and guides everywhere.
Two current generations of the family still live at Chatsworth in “private” quarters on the estate. Some of their bedrooms are just a closed door away from the thronging crowds - it would be a very strange life to live here.
Ruth persists in trying to relate the owner/occupiers of the Lismore Castle we visited back in Ireland to this family. She quizzes several guides about the link, some of whom don’t know and promise to do their homework. She eventually finds a knowledgeable lady and works out that they are in fact the one and the same Cavendish family. The heir (Lord William Burlington) and his family have moved here from Lismore Castle in the past 12 months or so to become familiar with the running of the estate before it is passed to him by his father the duke, who is in his 80s. Another succession tangle but at perhaps a different scale.
We’ve timed our visit to Chatsworth in the nick of time. They’re closing next weekend for two weeks to prepare the house for its annual Christmas makeover. There’s boxes of ornaments, baubles and garlands in the entrance marquee ready to be spread around, and a few Christmas trees have already been assembled and decorated upstairs. It must be another very good money spinner as there’s going to be a dedicated Christmas market in the central courtyard, and already the existing gift shop is heaving with Christmas treats and present ideas.
There’s simply too much to see here inside Chatsworth House so we’ll limit ourselves to just a few featured items, some of which might be of interest to Ruth’s sister Mary - the interior decorator - if she’s looking for some more bedroom inspiration at Gracemere!
The overall decoration of the house is simply too ostentatious for us as there’s just too much going on in every room we pass through - you don’t know where to look from the ornately painted ceilings, to the tapestries, the artworks, the drapes, the furniture, and then the objets d’art themselves - these people were (and are) serious collectors!
It would be very difficult to feel ‘at home’ in any of the rooms we pass through so you can only hope the family’s ‘private’ quarters are more understated.
If you want more opulence, see Beth’s photographs in Chatsworth 8.1.
We mentioned earlier the extravagant 6th Duke of Devonshire (the bachelor duke) who in the 1800s couldn’t help himself when it came to ‘beautiful’ things. He spent 47 years improving and collecting things for his many family houses and estates.
He famously built the sculpture gallery at Chatsworth which is filled with amazing artworks - once again it’s a bit over-the-top for us though the detail in the statue of the Veiled Vestal (see below) is simply stunning.
After the opulence inside Chatsworth House it’s time to head outdoors where the work of celebrated landscape architects, including Lancelot (Capability) Brown, can be seen. There’s something like 105 acres of grounds to be maintained, tended by a team of 20 full time gardeners and dedicated volunteers.
There’s the famous Cascade and Emperor Fountain (all gravity fed from a reservoir in the hills above), grottos and waterfalls, rock gardens (built to resemble the Peaks District itself), rose gardens, temples and mazes to name just a few. We didn’t get to see half of it in the time we had available.
One feature invented, or at least used, by Capability Brown is a bit interesting. He didn’t like stone fences interfering with a view so he devised a thing called a ‘ha-ha’ to give the optical illusion that the park lands and garden were one. When you needed to control stock you excavated a wide trench (six foot deep or so) and built a stone wall down to the bottom, effectively stopping the animals from jumping across the wide ditch that remains on their side. I’m not sure how the economics would stack up against the exclusion fencing being used by brother Matthew in western Queensland to control kangaroos and wild dogs but not well I would guess. Still, you get uninterrupted views of your grazing animals across the fields.
By 842U at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=51102317
We think Capability Brown also had a hand in having the local village of Edensor moved and the course of the river widened to improve the view from the house!
The top of the Cascade features this elaborate temple which was apparently designed by a Thomas Archer! We don’t think he’s a relative.
The water is gravity fed from a reservoir in the hills above. We think the water flowing here is being piped away from the cascade steps until the necessary restoration work is done. The notice below gives more details of the work that needs to be undertaken.
Although Chatsworth has always had a kitchen garden and greenhouses to supply the “house”, the extensive area planted out today wasn’t undertaken until the 1990s under the supervision of the 11th Duke and Duchess, “Debo” Cavendish.
All manner of fruit, salad, cut flowers and vegetables are grown here. The ‘house’ and restaurants are supplied with produce with the surplus sold in the farm shop.
We’ve been ‘walking’ for hours so it’s time for a quick late lunch in the elaborate stable complex which has been turned into various restaurant options (depending on your budget), eating areas and yet another gift shop - they don’t want to miss making a dollar here. Again, a big operation with lots of staff on duty.
It’s getting late but we still want to see a bit of the Peaks District before it gets dark. Beth sets in a course for the Ladybower Dam where we hope to get a vista across the countryside. We don’t make the ‘bluff’ lookout we hoped for (it’s getting late and it’s a serious vertical climb away) so we settle for a stroll around the dam wall and the surrounding woodlands.
The tiny part of the Peaks District we drive through is full of little stone villages - very picturesque and busy with traffic on a Sunday afternoon, more incredibly narrow, winding roads, and intrepid hikers with backpacks on their shoulders and sturdy walking boots on their feet. You’d need to be well prepared before heading out as the weather can close in very quickly here.
Up on the moors you get lovely views across the countryside with the last of the autumn colours showing through.
There’s obviously much more to see in the Peaks District and Beth is even talking of undertaking a walk someday. It doesn’t have the high mountains of Scotland but the scenery is spectacular with lots of interesting villages to explore. We’ve run out of time for now - tomorrow morning we head for Wales.