Hardwick Hall

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Hardwick Hall - Derbyshire (NT)

The name 'Hardwick' means 'sheep farm', but a greater contrast between the literal meaning and the actual appearance of Hardwick could scarcely be imagined.. The house we see today, together with the ruins of the Old Hall nearby were the work of one of the most forceful personalities of the Elizabethan age, Elizabeth, Countess of Shrewsbury, better known as 'Bess of Hardwick'. From a position of lowly gentry, Bess's rise in wealth and status would be hard to improve on. She outlived four husbands, each of a progressively higher status than the last, and when she died, she was immensely rich. Her strong personality and hard head made her a formidable business woman, acquiring land, building several houses and exploiting the natural resources of her land as well as the money left to her by her husbands.

It was her second and most successful marriage to Sir William Cavendish that enabled her to start building. The Cavendishes rebuilt Chatsworth in Tudor splendour; although now hidden by the later facade, the existing house is that of Bess's time. When her last marriage to George Talbot, 6th Earl of Shrewsbury started to falter, due in some measure to the imposition of their prisoner Mary, Queen of Scots, Bess turned her attention to her father's house at Hardwick, buying the land outright and commencing a programme of construction that led eventually to two houses within spitting distance of each other.

What is now known as Hardwick Old Hall was the first to rise high above the Derbyshire hills (and now the M1). The central section had a gabled roofline and irregular arrangement, subsequently completed on either side with high squared wings topped by balustraded parapets. Before this Hall was completed however, Bess decided to build a more up to date and grander Hall a short distance up the hill. She lived in the Old Hall while construction was underway and the early death of her husband gave her free reign to concentrate her attentions to her own property, with Chatsworth going to her unfavoured first son, Henry Cavendish. Hardwick was the intended inheritance of her second and favourite son, William Cavendish.When she moved into the new Hall, the Old Hall was used for extra accommodation for upper servants (sons and daughters of gentry) and guests.

'Hardwick Hall more glass than wall' is the common epithet given to this beautiful house and it is here that the Elizabethan passion for glass reaches its finest expression. Other contemporary houses such as Longleat displayed the wealth and status of their builders (glass was very expensive) and yet other houses such as Burghley and Chatsworth were much bigger but here at Hardwick, Bess proclaimed her rise in the world through the stylish and latest symmetry of the house on all four sides, her initials carved in stone on the top, framed against the sky and the vast expanses of window, which did however, make the house extremely cold in winter.

The entrance is through a simple loggia supported by eight stone pillars, decorated with bands to match the transoms of the windows on the ground floor. The status of the rooms is clearly delineated from the outside, with the smallest ground floor windows only two panes high to light the servants rooms, then the three paned high windows of the larger family rooms on the first floor, then the state rooms on the second floor, Bess's own preference, lit by huge four paned high windows. The towers carry windows of equal height and some of the rooms behind them were secondary bedrooms, some storage rooms and some banqueting rooms for the serving of sweetmeats etc. after dinner. The elegant facades are maintained by the internal placement of chimney stacks and also the retrograde lack of a privy tower.

Life at Hardwick seems to have been carried on in some style, the State Rooms on the second floor used for formal entertaining and dining with the family. The High Great Chamber is a descendant of the Great Halls of medieval houses, but here it is lit by the huge windows and decorated in Renaissance style. The presence of rush matting here and elsewhere in the house, reintroduced by Evelyn, Duchess of Devonshire after the Second World War, ensures a scented memory of the Hall to add to that of sight. The plasterwork frieze has traces of paint and is fabulous in its design and preservation. The Gallery is equally impressive; at 162 feet long, 26 feet high and varying from 22 to 40 feet wide (because of the bay windows) it is the largest, although not the longest, Elizabethan Gallery remaining and the only one to retain both its original tapestries and pictures. The plasterwork ceiling here and elsewhere at Hardwick were probably completed during Bess's son, the 1st Earl of Devonshire's time.

Many of the rooms seem to have survived intact from Bess's time, but this is not the case. After the remodelling of Chatsworth, the family mainly resided there and much of the existing furniture was sent over as being too old-fashioned. In subsequent centuries, the mistaken idea that Mary, Queen of Scots was kept at Hardwick was passed into legend. Although some of the furniture and fittings later added to Hardwick did come from the Talbot properties she stayed in, she was never at Hardwick, Bess's own property. The 6th Duke of Devonshire, the so-called bachelor Duke, also did much rearrangement and refurbishment, with old fittings from his other properties in the early nineteenth century. Because of his use of contemporary materials, it is difficult to trace exactly what was his and what was Bess' and the 1st Earl's environment in places. It was the 6th Duke who put up the tapestries on the Great Staircases, rising through the height of the house.

The Entrance Hall at Hardwick was another of Bess's innovations (or rather that of her architect Robert Smythson) as it runs through the house rather than along the house as medieval halls did. The embroidered panels now in the Entrance Hall depicting legendary and historic heroines were not made for Hardwick, but came over from Chatsworth and date from around 1570. They do provide an important introduction to the magnificent collection of Elizabethan embroidery and needle-work held at Hardwick. Bess and her gentlewomen together with professional needle-women produced a prodigious quantity and fine quality of work, some of which is now on display.

The Kitchen is now used as the tea-room and still has a good collection of the copper utensils, all engraved with the Devonshire crest, which were used here during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The first development of cooking away from the main open fire is situated under the kitchen window; known as a stewing hearth this rare late seventeenth century device was installed in its present position probably during the eighteenth century.

The gardens at Hardwick were arranged symmetrically around the house, but were never elaborate. There was of course a kitchen garden but some of the lawns were left to grow long for hay, giving a rustic feel to the house. Today there is a very extensive herb garden, orchards with traditional varieties of apple and pear and flower borders inspired by Gertrude Jeykll.