ALL I NEED IS MY PASSPORT

August 12, 2025

Hardwick Hall is a rather awe-inspiring and overwhelming place. It begins with Bess of Hardwick. Four highly profitable marriages, Bess of Hardwick rose to the highest levels of English nobility and became enormously wealthy. The woman was a shrewd businesswoman in her own right, increasing her assets with business interests including mines and glass-making workshops.

Hardwick Hall is a prime example of the Elizabethan prodigy house. The Renaissance-style home was built between 1590 and 1597 for Bess of Hardwick. It was designed by architect Robert Smythson. Hardwick Hall stands as one of the earliest examples of the English interpretation of this style, which emerged gradually from the Italian Renaissance.

Bess of Hardwick was the wealthiest woman in England after Queen Elizabeth I, and her house was conceived to be a conspicuous statement of her wealth and power. The windows are large and numerous at a time when glass was a luxury, leading to the saying, “Hardwick Hall, more glass than wall.

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The house is spectacular, and pictures do not do it justice, simply due to the scale of the rooms.  However, there were a handful of things that truly stood out.

Important documents and deeds for the estate were kept in the Muniment room. The room features barrel-vaulted ceilings to provide additional fire protection and security.  It was Bess’s son William who added the muniment drawers.

These plaster friezes, depicting hunting scenes, took my breath away.

The centrepiece of the frieze is a representation of the Goddess Diana surrounded by her court, with three stags protecting her from wild animals.

Most experts believe that the panel is a homage to Queen Elizabeth I, and that the stags, copied from the Cavendish coat of arms, express allegiance to the monarch shown by Bess, who would have loved the Queen to visit Hardwick. Elizabeth never came.

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The Sea Dog Table dates from around 1570 or 1575 and was made in Paris, following a design by Jacques Androuet du Cerceau. It is regarded as one of the most important examples of 16th-century furniture in Britain and one of the most important pieces in the house.

The table is mainly made of inlaid walnut, with “gilding, fruitwood, tulipwood, and marble” also used. The creatures have dog’s heads, human breasts, front legs with paws, but the lower body of a fish. The base rests on tortoises or turtles.

The Gideon Tapestries

In the winter of 1592, Bess went on a shopping spree in London. Among her purchases was the Gideon set of tapestries purchased from the estate of Sir Christopher Hatton for the sum of £326 15s 9d.  Five pounds was deducted because Bess had to change the Hatton coat of arms to her own.

There are thirteen tapestries, which form one of the more significant collections of textiles in the world. They have hung in the Long Gallery since the end of the 16th century.

They recently underwent a 24-year-long conservation project, using traditional sewing and stitching techniques tapestries portray the Old Testament story of Gideon

Called by God to deliver Israel from the Midianites, Gideon led an elite army of 300 of the finest Israelite warriors against them and was victorious. He was offered a crown but declined the kingship, declaring that only God could rule the people of Israel.

The tapestries were made at Oudenaarde in Belgium by an unknown weaver.

Noble Women

In another room are two large appliqué wall hangings depicting the ‘Noble Women of the Ancient World’.

Bess commissioned a set of five large wall hangings featuring noble women from history, myth, and legend.  Four survive, and two are on display in this room.  These two panels depict Penelope and Lucretia.

They were made from repurposed church vestments acquired during the English Reformation.  Two of Bes’s husbands were involved in the dissolution of the monasteries, so they would have had access to these expensive materials

Hardwick Old Hall

Hardwick Old Hall dates from the 16th century.

Bess of Hardwick was born in the Old Hall, and when she separated from her third husband, the Earl of Shrewsbury, in 1584, she returned to her childhood home. She began to expand the house, at the same time as she was planning to build the much grander ‘new’ Hall a short distance away.

The end for Hardwick Old Hall came when the Cavendish family built Chatsworth House. Chatsworth became the family seat, so the hall was no longer needed. Stone was removed for building supplies, and the hall was left to decay.

The friezes in Old Hardwick Hall are over 400 years old. Innovative for their time, the panels provided prototypes for features later incorporated into Hardwick New Hall.  They were restored in 2022.

*Hardwick Hall stands as one of my more favorite historic houses in this area.

 

August 2025

Susan and I began this week traveling with a dear old friend of mine, James. It is hard to explain how vast James’ knowledge is when it comes to history, so I will let his bio with a publishing company speak to it. James Hargrave has a PhD in Economic History from the University of Durham and a Diploma in Archive Administration from the University of Wales (Aberystwyth). He specialised for 25 years in cataloguing large collections of papers accumulated by dukes, prime ministers, businesses, etc., but his historical interests stretch from antiquity to railway finance and equipment, Central and Eastern Europe, and the British Empire-Commonwealth, including comparisons between colonisations and empires ancient and modern.

This trip began with our catching a train from Oxford to Derby to meet James.  It took me some time to realize Derby is pronounced Darby and that I was going to be continually confused for most of the week over American versus UK English.  Susan, having lived here for ten years, is having no such problems.

Derby

Derby, in Derbyshire, is in the East Midlands of England. The original Derby Cathedral was probably built in about 943 by the Anglo-Saxon King Edmund I,  of which no trace survives.  The church has seen many iterations, but as it stands today, the tower is original from the 1530s; the rest of the church was rebuilt to a Neo-Classical design in 1725 by the architect James Gibbs.

Watson Fothergill was prolific from 1864 to around 1912, designing over 100 buildings. He primarily designed in the Gothic Revival and vernacular Old English styles.  His exuberantly ornamented office was a way of showing off his talents.

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* Derby was never bombed during the wars, so much of its architecture survives, spanning many eras.
* Grotesques are a major part of most every Victorian and medieval building; for some reason, dogs are prolific in Derbyshire.

Town of Ilam

The town of Ilam is in Stratfordshire. It is a town with chalet-style houses and a matching schoolhouse. This concept was started in the 1800s by Jesse Watts-Russell, who inherited a fortune on the death of his father, a wealthy soap manufacturer. What stopped us dead in our tracks when driving through was this tower.

This is the Mary Watts-Russell Memorial Cross and ornate gothic-style obelisk of local limestone in the style of an Eleanor Cross, sitting smack in the middle of the road into town.

Haddon Hall

Haddon Hall is a former seat of the Dukes of Rutland and is the home of Lord Edward Manners.  This is the first of many houses that require a PhD in English Royalty progression to understand. The Vernon family acquired it through a 12th-century marriage. Four centuries later, in 1563, Dorothy Vernon, the daughter and heiress of Sir George Vernon, married John Manners. Their grandson, also John Manners, inherited the Earldom in 1641 from a distant cousin. His son, another John Manners, was made 1st Duke of Rutland in 1703. In the 20th century, another John Manners, 9th Duke of Rutland, made a life’s work of restoring the hall.

While the house was lovely, it was the chapel that took my breath away. The Chapel St John Nicholas was originally Norman, with later medieval additions. The chapel is noted for its extensive medieval wall paintings featuring scenes from the Bible,

These are frescoes secco, a technique of painting dry plaster. During the Reformation in the 16th century, the frescoes were plastered over and not discovered until the early 20th century.

The Reredos is also breathtaking.

The reredos is Nottingham Alabaster from the 15th century. Nottingham Alabaster refers to an English sculpture industry, mainly of relatively small religious carvings. This raredos shows the Passion and Resurrection of Christ. The 9th Duke of Rutland found these in Reykjavik, Iceland. – The frame was copied and made locally, and below each scene is a Latin inscription taken from a similar frame now in the National Museum of Iceland.

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Chatsworth House

I visited Chatsworth House in October of 2022 and stuck to visiting the garden.  This time, I ventured into the house. I don’t even know what to say.  It is so over the top as to not find nor possibly deserve words. I will admit that I didn’t take many pictures; I was simply visually overloaded.

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The house has been in the Cavendish family’s possession since 1549. Bess of Hardwick began to build the new Chatsworth House in 1553. William Cavendish, 4th Earl of Devonshire, started rebuilding the house in 1687.  The house has a rich history of hosting royalty, which is exactly why it is so over the top.

What is delightful near Chatsworth is the community of Edensor. Much of the village is privately owned by the Cavendish family. *

All of that was JUST day one with James.