Chatsworth
The first house at Chatsworth of which any record has survived was begun by Sir William Cavendish and his wife Elizabeth Hardwick in 1552, three years after they had bought the estate. It filled exactly the site of the square part of the present house. But there were great difference between then and now. The house faced eastwards, turning its back upon the village, which then reached almost to its gates; and for this reason the park lay wholly east of the building on the hillside. Here still stands Cavendish's Hunting Tower. Between the house and the river was a walled garden, much of it covered by seven large ponds or reservoirs. These were designed to take the floods, when water overflowed the wide S-bend which checked its passage, below the confluence of the Barbrook with the Derwent. In the north-west angle of the garden stood an ancient earthwork, guardian of the ford. This was enclosed in a building now called Queen Mary's Bower, because, it is said, the Queen of Scots was allowed to rest there, when a prisoner in the hands of the Earl of Shrewsbury, the last and the greatest of Bess of Hardwick's four husbands. Cavendish was the only one by whom she had a family. Their second son was created Earl of Devonshire in 1618.
Elizabethan Chatsworth survived intact till near the end of the 17th century. Then in 1686 the fourth Earl, soon to become the first Duke, began to pull it down. At first he had meant to rebuild only the South front; but he found building so delightful that once started he could not stop. After the South front he rebuilt the East (1691-96). Then he decided he had done enough, and after three years spent in erecting outbuildings, harmonising the old and the new styles and laying out his new garden, he commissioned Kniff to paint a careful picture of his great achievement. But hardly was the picture finished when once again the urge to build proved irresistible: he rebuilt the West front (1699-1702) and, after another brief pause, the small remaining section of the North. The new Chatsworth was completed just before he died in August 1707.
William Talman was the architect of the South and East fronts. The West and North were probably designed by Thomas Archer, aided by the Duke himself.
In the West wing, guided by instinct, the Duke made a change of immense significance. Only two years earlier he had begun new Stables and Offices on that side of Chatsworth, thus proving that for him it was still the back; but now, by the richness of its facade, he marked it unmistakably as the front.
Fifty years passed before the vast implications of this change of front were realised. Then from 1755-63, the fourth Duke worked them out in a single comprehensive scheme, the central purpose of which was to clear the front of all obstructions, leaving the view uninterrupted. The course of the river was straightened, so that the ugly ponds could be dispensed with. The West garden was uprooted. The old bridge and mill were demolished and rebuilt in new positions - the former to the north, the latter to the south. James Paine designed both, as also the new Stables to the north-east, now the back. In the house itself, the main entrance was moved from the West front to the North: the former Kitchen became the Entrance Hall and a new Kitchen was built on the upper side of the new Entrance Court. At the same time all the land on the west side of the river, including all that could be seen of Edensor from the windows of the new front, was stripped of buildings and converted into parkland. Thus in essentials Chatsworth began to assume its present aspect.
After a pause of half a century there followed another reconstruction. In 1818 the young sixth Duke began his life's work. This was to weld into a single whole the six separate sections which had comprised the first Duke's piecemeal building. The corridors around the Courtyard were remodelled and rebuilt and a new North wing was added.
Edensor suffered further changes. The old High Street in the valley bottom was razed to the ground, all but one small house, and the remnant of the village on the further slope, clustered around its ancient church, was practically rebuilt in 1839. Finally, the church itself was replaced by the present building, designed by Sir Gilbert Scott. This was consecrated in 1866.
Images of Chatsworth March 2009
The Dukeries and Sherwood Forest
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