Rival Reviews: Chatsworth House
The jewel in Derbyshire’s crown still shines bright, but that’s what happens when you coat everything in gold leaf.
A perfect day at Chatsworth
In the 17th century, philosopher Thomas Hobbes wrote of the Seven Wonders of the Peak District, a compendium of must-see locations in Derbyshire for any discerning upmarket adventurer. These consisted of, in his own words: ‘Two fonts [fountains], two caves. One pallace, mount and pit.’ In other words, St Ann's Well, Buxton; The Ebbing and Flowing Well, Tideswell; Poole's Cavern, Buxton; The Devil's Arse Cavern (yes, really), Castleton; Mam Tor, Hope Valley; Eldon Hole, near Castleton; and of course Chatsworth House. Only one of these is completely man made.
Chatsworth has been the seat of the Dukes and Duchesses of Devonshire, the Cavendishes, for over 500 years. Though Chatsworth as we know it has not been in being quite as long. The estate was acquired by the family in 1549 when Sir William Cavendish, along with his wife Elizabeth, better known as Bess of Hardwick of Hardwick Hall, sold estates gifted by Henry VIII (rude) and bought the Chatsworth land.
(It is perhaps important to note at this point that all of the Cavendish Earls and Dukes were named William, up until Spencer, who became the 8th Duke in the mid 19th century).
The couple demolished whatever lame house had been there previously and started their own ambitious project in 1552, which was very Grand Designs of them. Unfortunately this house was itself redesigned and little evidence of it remains. The hunting lodge, built in the 1580’s and visible from the garden at the top of an escarpment (steep hill), is still standing and can now be rented out as a holiday home.
The Cascade - water has been temporarily turned off for conservation
It was in the 17th century that Chatsworth had its first major facelift. The 4th Earl of Devonshire employed the architect William Talman to rebuild the South Front and added new family rooms as well as state apartments for any visiting monarchs who might show up for tea. For the Earl’s part in bringing on the reign of William III following James II’s hasty departure, a role that mainly consisted of voting that Will could be king in parliament, he was made a Duke. It was due to the 1st Duke of Devonshire that much of Chatsworth is how it is today.
Uncontent with only redoing the South Front, the Duke also redid the East Front, again with Talman, adding the Long Gallery and the much-lauded Painted Hall, and turned his attention to the garden, where landscape architects George London and Henry Wise contrived a very, very large formal garden. The french architect Grillet designed the Cascade, a large water feature, and Thomas Archer designed the temple at its peak. But the Duke wasn’t done here. He also rebuilt the West Front, designing the new look himself and finally the North Front was completed by Archer, because at this point it couldn’t be left out. In 1702 he dug the canal pond where that had been a hill. It was all finished just in time for the Duke’s death in 1707.
His son made no major changes, quite enough had already been done, but he was a great collector of paintings and drawings, as well as coins and Greek and Roman sculpture. Thus began a long tradition of art collection at Chatsworth that continues into the present day.
The house’s next big changes came with the 4th Duke, who decided to change the approach of the house and demolished the 1st Duke’s stables and built new ones, where they are still located to the North East of the house. It was this William Cavendish who employed THE landscape gardener, Lancelot 'Capability’ Brown to naturalise the park and formal garden into the English landscape garden style, though how much was actually completed by William Kent (gasp!), another prominent landscape designer who also worked on the estate, is not known. This naturalisation involved filling in fountains, removing avenues and topiary and planting trees in natural, non-suspicious clumps to imitate nature.
The 6th Duke, inheriting the estate at just 21, engaged the architect Jeffrey Wyatville to build up the north wing of the house, changing the long gallery into a library for entertaining and creating a purpose-built Sculpture gallery, his preferred collecting item. However, the 6th Duke is perhaps better known for one of his most canny decisions, employing the gardener Joseph Paxton, a horticultural powerhouse. The two met in Chiswick, where Paxton was employed as a gardener. The Duke appointed Paxton as his head gardener in 1826 and the rest is history. Much of what you can see on your visit today is the product of these two men’s collaboration, aided significantly by Paxton’s wife, Sarah, who oversaw advancements when her husband was travelling. Paxton’s most famous achievement at Chatsworth was the great glass conservatory, though this was devastatingly demolished in 1920 and replaced with a hedge maze. More on this later.
Disaster was to strike however, and grim times were heading towards the landed gentry. When the 8th Duke died in 1908, the 9th Duke was ordered to pay over £500,000 in death duties following the war, the equivalent of over £57 million today. Death duties are an amount to be paid upon inheriting an estate. They most commonly associated with the decline in the country house, and indeed as the percentage to be paid increased and reached a zenith as the World Wars killed heirs in greater and greater numbers, they were so crippling that they literally taxed families out of house and home. Many houses, artefacts and works of art that are now property of the state became so when the government accepted them in lieu of inheritance tax. Hardwick Hall for example, was passed to the National Trust by the Cavendish family for this very reason, when the 10th Duke died and death duties of 80% had to be paid. Chatsworth itself however remains in the hands of the Cavendish family to this day, luckily they had a lot of other places to pass off instead; Devonshire House and Chiswick House were also sold off.
Like most of the UK’s great houses, Chatsworth was put to work in the war years, though as the 10th Duke has heard that soldiers did tend to damage the houses used as barracks, he offered the estate up to a girls school from Wales, packed up the house and moved out. In 1939, 300 school girls and their teachers moved in and stayed for six years.
The family only moved back into Chatsworth in 1959, the 11th Duke was reluctant to move back in after the war, pessimistic after the future of great houses, which is fair, The vast majority of them at this point had either been destroyed, sold or donated to the country. The Duke himself had to pay over £7 million in tax when his father died, and there had been talks for a while about giving up Chatsworth to the Victoria and Albert Museum. However, in the mid 1950’s, the house began to get modernised, new bathrooms were added, central heating installed and the whole house was rewired. The Chatsworth House Trust was created in 1981, aimed at preserving the house for ‘the benefit of the public’. Thanks guys.To legalise the occupation of the house, the Chatsworth Trust pays a rent of £1 a year. Jammy bastards.
The 12th Duke and Duchess moved out of the house in early 2023, to make room for their successors and allow them to make the house their home. Though it’s possible they got sick of the tourists. Fair enough.
The Painted Hall looking very painted indeed
It's a glorious day in the neighbourhood when we roll up to Chatsworth, ready for our 11.45am viewing. I’ve wanted to come to Chatsworth for a long, long time, and waiting for good weather was definitely the right move. The car park is already branching out to the overflow field, but it doesn't feel crowded, probably because this house is gargantuan.
I am joined by Kay and Eve, and our tour starts in a ticket office, appropriately, though we have booked in advance, which was once a room which was once the kitchens, so I’m told by a house steward, and was remodelled to an entrance hall by the 4th Duke in 1760. The steward also tells me to look out for what he calls ‘wow moments’, a set of views around the house guaranteed to impress. Money's worth is instantly proven when the very first corner we turn reveals the Painted Hall.
You would probably recognise this room, it has been featured in a myriad of tv shows and movies, including Pride and Prejudice (film and BBC TV series), The Duchess and The Wolfman, plus TV dramas such as the BBC’s Death Comes to Pemberley. So what I’m saying is you would recognise it if you like period dramas. Standing where the Great Hall of the original Chatsworth House had been, the Painted Hall is a double decker space with elaborate 17th century mural paintings covering the walls and ceiling, and a grand staircase straight ahead. The walls depict scenes from the life of Julius Caesar, as well as the scene of his death via knife to the back. The ceiling depicts the Roman pantheon chilling out on a cloud, and we play a quick game of ‘Guess the God’.
A very large crystal indeed
Also in this room is a door out to the Inner Courtyard, a small space decorated with a couple of pieces of modern art Eve immediately hates, a running theme for the trip. In fact, Chatsworth is dotted with a myriad of mostly sculptural interventions, continuing a patronage and collection of the arts that began with the 2nd Duke all those years ago in the 18th century. For me they’re ok, but I do feel that artistic intervention should have some relevance to its surroundings, as I do feel intervention should be borne from recontextualising spaces, making strange the usual, and visa versa, and there were a few pieces of this tour that did not communicate that to me. But hey, it’s not my house. I also noticed in this hallway that many of the exterior window panes at Chatsworth are literally painted with 24-carat gold leaf, which is wicked class. Fair play.
Another standout on the tour was the Chapel Corridor, where it’s proved to visitors that you can never be too classy to be a crystal girlie. The corridor was apparently reordered to resemble a collectors gallery in 2010, and so there is an eclectic mix of classic and ancient sculpture, old master paintings,17th century furniture, contemporary ceramics, and large geodes and crystals the size of toddlers. It’s a fun little explore across almost 4000 years of human and natural history.
An honourable mention also goes to the Great Stairs, where relief paintings on the walls mimic sculpture, and surely would do numbers on home décor TikTok, but the real standout was the exhibition, Imaginary Conversations, at the top, a temporary installation of fashion inspired by the unique style of Duchess Deborah Cavendish.
Some of the fabulous pieces from the exhibition
The Duchess was part of the infamous Mitford family, who had unfortunate ties to fascism and Hitler through the sisters Unity and Diana. Deborah however married Andrew Cavendish in 1941, and is the mother of the current Duke, though she herself died in 2014. She was known for, among other things, her electrically classy sense of style, of the quirky type only old money aristocracy possess, and this exhibition lays out how she inspired the Spring Summer 2024 collection of fashion designer Erdem Moralioglu. The Guest Bedrooms, previously closed for an extended period, have been taken over by fabulous displays of ludicrously fashionable outfits, and virtines containing original pieces of the Duchesses clothes, including shoes with Elvis Presley’s face embossed upon them. You can't buy that level of class. The rooms themselves are adorned with beautiful hand painted chinoiserie wallpaper, which matches the vibe perfectly. I would have preferred more interpretation, but that is testament to how interesting the concept and designs are.
I have to say that after this, the dark wood and gloomy sensibilities of the State Rooms held little allure. The next room that really impressed was all the way back down to the Library, though this was only viewable from the entrance, as the family still use it regularly. I wonder if they close the door. Highlights from the book collection include , appropriately, a first edition Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, The Birds of America by John James Abudon and The Hours of Henry VII, a personal prayer book signed by the king. The room is part of a series remodelled by the 6th Duke to create something of a party corridor, a suite of rooms including a grand dining room within which to entertain guests. There is a grand piano here that visitors were welcome to play, but unfortunately none of us knew how, so we didn't embarrass ourselves.
This lion has seen some stuff.
The final room of the tour is another favourite, the Sculpture Gallery, another conception of the 6th Duke, inspired by the top lit Braccio Nuovo in the Vatican. If you have or at some point will install a skylight, I strongly encourage you to use this inspiration as your own, it would be very funny. All the works in the gallery are carved from highly polished marble, lending an otherworldly peace to the monotone room. There are also fun props that allow you to mimic the statues' poses, which we enjoyed. Look out for a particularly haunted looking lion.
Leaving this room takes you immediately into the orangery, now a gift shop. It was boiling in there. I bought some coffee which we tried the next morning and can confirm is nice. This was followed by a satisfactory lunch in the sun and then my favourite bit. The gardens.
What to say of the Chatsworth gardens. Perhaps I should start with Joseph Paxton, who I mentioned earlier. Have you perchance heard of bananas? The most consumed banana in the world, the banana we all know and love, is called the Cavendish Banana. This is because, after a shipment was gifted to the sixth Duke in 1834, it was cultivated by Joseph Paxton in his greenhouses and shipped across the world from Derbyshire.
Have you perchance heard of the Crystal Palace? This fantastical structure of prefabricated glass and iron was a successor to the comparatively humble Great Conservatory at Chatsworth. Joseph Paxton designed the venue for the Great Exhibition of 1851, in 1850, after a competition to find a suitable design yielded no suitable result.
Have you perchance heard of gravity? Joseph Paxton invented this too! I kid of course, but he did harness it to create the Emperor Fountain. Powered only by the pressure generated from water dropping 297 feet through a 16 inch wide pipe, the water spurts out to reach a height of 90 metres, it was the tallest gravity-powered fountain in the world for 160 years. If you’re curious, the tallest is now at Stanway House in the Cotswolds, and the water reaches a height of 300 metres.
A view over the rockery from a viewing platform.
It is clear that the shade of the working relationship between Joseph Paxton and the 6th Duke hangs heavy over the Chatsworth gardens. Much interpretation is centred around their innovations, though rightly so. Though there is more to see. For example, the Cascade, a water amusement that sends aqua tipping down a several hundred feet long stone staircase is one of Chatsworth’s most famous sights, but a surprise winner for us was the Rock Garden. I know, I was shocked too.
Put simply, this rockery makes all other rockeries look like shit. Another Paxton/6th Duke invention and inspired by the rock formations of the Alps, impressively, intimidatingly large rocks are built up from smaller fragments to create mountains. The largest construction, known as Wellington Rock, is 14 metres high. The rockery is strewn over several layers and features shallow caves, water features and viewing platforms. It reminds me of that planet from Avatar but I’ve never seen the movie so take this with a pinch of salt. We loved it.
And so there we go, a whistle stop tour of Chatsworth I know, but if I were to tell you everything we would be here all day, indeed we were. Just over 6 hours tromping round the Cavendish’s estate in total. I’m tired just thinking about it. Good night!
Lunch
The sandwich selection was just a bit weird. Coronation chicken, no one likes that; cheese and pickle, i hate pickle; egg mayo, stopppp. Let’s keep it simple folks. Hot food looked good, but £17 is too much for a bit of lasagne. The blueberry lemon cake was also rubbish. On the whole underwhelming but not as bad as the National Trust.
Is the café in the kitchens of stables?
The café (and another gift shop) is the stables, along with a fancier restaurant that you can book in advance.
Can I take my dog?
The gardens are large enough to make a full day out of just the grounds, as dogs, of course, aren't allowed into the house.
Can I take my kids?
One thing that I found pleasantly refreshing was the amount of ‘modern’ activities and interventions that were themed around the rooms and their contents. This keeps the tour light and interesting for all ages.
Well what did you think?
I appreciated the respect apparent in this house for the visitor, there has been real dedication to create an experience and explore the long history of the estate. I can’t imagine what it’s like to live in a house that is descended upon everyday by visitors from across the world, but fair play to the Cavendish’s they have handled it with grace. I won't feel sorry for them though, they still have plenty of house leftover and many millions in net worth and land. Context!!