Portal:Derbyshire/Article Archive/December 2007

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Chatsworth House is a large country house at Chatsworth, Derbyshire, England, 3½ miles north east of Bakewell, originally built by Bess of Hardwick. It is the seat of the Dukes of Devonshire, whose family name is Cavendish. Chatsworth stands on the left bank of the River Derwent and looks across the river to the low hills that divide the valleys of the Derwent and the Wye. The Park is expansive, and the house is backed by rocky hills covered with bracken and heather. The house contains a unique collection of priceless paintings, furniture, Old Master drawings, neoclassical sculpture and other artefacts. Chatsworth's garden is one of the most famous in England. Chatsworth has been selected as the United Kingdom's favourite country house several times.

The building history and layout of Chatsworth are quite complex. The diagram in this leaflet gives an approximate idea of the structure of the house and stables (but the carriage house at the back of the stables is largely omitted). North is to the left and the west front of the house faces the bottom of the page. The main block of the house is to the right and built around a courtyard which was reconstructed to its present form over about 20 years from 1687. The long north wing on the left was added in the early nineteenth century. The long building between two is the Conservative Walk, and the 1970 Display Greenhouse and the 1st Duke's Greenhouse are in front of it (see the garden section below). The house is built on sloping ground. The ground level is lower on the north and west sides than on the south and east (and so are the floors of the ground floor rooms inside). The east facing first floor rooms in the north wing are actually at ground floor level as seen from the garden, but the ground floor rooms beneath them look onto a gently sloping lawn, so they are not really basement rooms.
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