Month: August 2017

Chatsworth, Derbyshire

House frontage Privately Owned
A house was built at Chatsworth by Bess of Hardwick, and the house was rebuilt and extended by her descendants, the earls and dukes of Devonshire. In its present form it is not so much a house as a ducal palace. The house is built around a central square courtyard, on three principal floors. On the first floor is a series of opulent staterooms.  The grounds are large and contain a variety of features from a cascade to a long pond with fountain, a maze, greenhouses, lakes, woods etc.

When I visited most of the main rooms were occupied by a costume exhibition, and the objects restricted the view of the interiors in places.  The North Wing with sculptures was very dimly lit by electric candles. Seemingly this mimics a past Duke’s preferred way of showing it after dinner. Elsewhere was an exhibit about an 1897 fancy dress ball in London, with aristocrats dressed up as nobles from pre-1815. It must have been amazing.

Many of the rooms are extremely ornate, with  tromp d’ oeil paintings applied to walls and ceilings and lots of decorative carving.

The greenhouses in the gardens have limited access. The prominent hunting tower is a holiday let.

It took me two hours to walk around the house, and some more time just to walk to one extremity of the gardens and back. If you want to see everything Chatsworth has to offer and have a lunch break, I would suggest an all-day visit.

Stable block
Stable block
Hunting Lodge
Hunting Lodge
Opulent interior
Opulent interior
Opulent interior
Opulent interior
Bedroom
Bedroom

Wentworth Woodhouse, S. Yorkshire

South of east frontage
So big I had to photograph it twice

Privately Owned
The Baroque western range of Wentworth Woodhouse was begun in 1725 for Thomas Watson Wentworth. However before this was finished, a new East Front, in fact an new house facing the other way, was commissioned. The house is said to be the largest private house in England and to have the longest frontage in Europe.
For many years, 1949-1979, the east front was leased to West Riding County Council and housed the Lady Mabel College of Physical Education.
After several changes of ownership and attempts at preservation, the house was acquired in 2017 by the Wentworth Woodhouse Preservation Trust for £7 million. The Treasury has promised £7.6 million for subsidence repairs, but millions more are claimed to be needed.

I went to Wentworth Woodhouse on a tour organised by JustGo Holidays. We had guided tours of the state rooms of the central East block on two floors. IIRC we saw the Pillared Hall, rooms through to the Low Dining Room, then up to Chapel, and other east front rooms including the Marble saloon and grand staircase. The rooms are in quite good condition and some are fully redecorated. The whole house consists of several blocks -the long east front, the west front and a service block behind the north end of the east front. More of a housing estate than a house, it has around 350 rooms and 150 times the floor area of the average British house. There are no gardens on the east side. The west side, where the owners lived, and the gardens are accessible on some of the tours, according to the WW website.
We were not permitted to photograph the interior, but some pictures and floor plans can be found online.
The land to the west and south was dug up by open-cast coal mining to within yards of the house in the 1940’s. An example of class warfare conducted by energy minister Manny Shinwell.
Several monuments and a grand stable block exist in the lands around the house.
According to the WW website (2023), the gardens etc and the house can both be visited.

East Front, north end
East Front, north end
Centre block
Centre block

Renishaw Hall

North front Privately Owned
Renishaw Hall was built by the Sitwell family. The core of the house was built in the 1620’s, and it was extended in stages from 1793 to 1806, adding a grand dining room, kitchen area, drawing room and ballroom wing. Minor changes were made in the 1890’s and 1908-9. The house now has a long, symmetrical north front in a somewhat Gothic style, with crenellations.
On the ground floor are various well-decorated and furnished rooms, the more notable being the dining room with semicircular apse, the Library, the long Drawing Room and the Ballroom. The Ballroom is currently furnished as a grand sitting room. The Old Kitchen is preserved with some early contents, but was not used as the main kitchen after the 1940’s. The contents of the house include some good furniture, and paintings by artists patronized by the Sitwells, as well as family portraits.
The old stable block has an exhibition room devoted to the three famous literary Sitwells, Dame Edith Sitwell, Osbert Sitwell and Sacheverell Sitwell.
The substantial gardens to the south of the house have formal gardens near the house and informal areas further away. A number of pieces of statuary stand in the gardens.
Access to the house is by conducted tour.

Impressive frontages, interesting contents, attractive gardens.

North Front, centre
North Front, centre
Gardens
Gardens
Gardens
Gardens
Pond with fountain
“Swimming Pool”
Box hedge on island in pond
“Fish Pond”

Calke Abbey

Calke Abbey house National Trust
Calke was built and lived in by the Harpur and Harpur Crewe families, some of them eccentric recluses. The National Trust has preserved the house largely as acquired, rather than sprucing it up.
One arrives at Calke passing an imposing stable block and arriving at a complex of large redbrick outbuildings now housing the reception, shop etc. The next stop is the dilapidated stable block, a massive affair surrounding two courtyards. There are two exhibition rooms and one can peer into many other spaces, mostly full of discarded objects. Leaving here one can wander round the back of the outbuildings and look into the biomass boiler room, or pass on into the gardens.
A short walk down through shrubbery brings one to open ground at the side of the house. Here one can go around to the house entrance, or if early take a hike up to the church and walled gardens.
The church was largely rebuilt in Victorian times and is small but interesting.
The walled gardens are huge and take some time to explore. The first walled garden, now let to grass, is four acres in size. Halfway along one side is the restored Orangery, not identified on the map. At the other side of the wall are several sections of cultivated garden and various horticultural buildings, greenhouses, boiler rooms, and even a tunnel or two to be explored. In summer, the flower gardens look very fine.
Back at the Abbey itself one enters under the pillared front. On all three floors, around half of the rooms are accessible to visitors. The ground floor has some fine rooms at the front and, owing to the slope of the ground outside, cellarage at the back. The first floor houses most of the finer rooms. The double-height Saloon is the most impressive room and the dining room and library are also fine. Many of these rooms contain the Calke collections of shells, rock specimens, stuffed birds and miscellaneous objects. The house appears to contain more objects than some museums, and until a sale in the 1020’s it really did contain more bird specimens than anywhere else. The third floor contains bedrooms, notably Sir Vauncey Harpur Crewe’s bedroom with its odd collection of contents. Many of the rooms were shut up in later years and used to store an accumulation of objects. Some rooms have been derelict since the 19th century.
The house tour ends at the courtyard. Have a good look around here. Features of the earlier Elizabethan house are said to be visible (not obvious). Explore the kitchen area. You can exit to the side, or explore the cellars at the back, which will lead you to a long arched tunnel which emerges at the brewhouse at the far side of the stable block.
One’s overall impression of Calke is of size: vast outbuildings, huge walled garden complex, extensive grounds, a large house full of thousands of objects and miles of outer grounds. On arrival at the outer gate I was handed a Calke CD and had time to listen to it before I arrived at the car park 1.5 miles further on.
Allow at least 4 1/2 hours for a full visit, excluding the outer grounds and tea-break.

Outbuildings
Outbuildings
Stable yard
Stable yard