Hardwick 1

We're still wondering how, in our several visits to the North, we'd never been to Hardwick. It was the work of Bess of Hardwick, aka Elizabeth Shrewsbury, whom we have already met at Chatsworth. The daughter of a modest country squire, she became, through a succession of marriages (4) and deaths of husbands (4), the richest woman in Elizabethan England, not including Elizabeth the Queen. The second marriage, the Cavendishes, got her a title and the fourth, Shrewsbury, made an already wealthy woman the wealthiest. She was a compulsive builder too, including the first house at Chatsworth, now gone, and the two below, Old and New Hardwick. She died in her 80s, still building. That (New) Hardwick is still around is something of a marvel. It was built in the 1580s and is thus one of the very oldest purely residential places we have seen. Not only is it wonderfully intact, it is chock-full of period items, furniture, art, and the most tapestries we have ever seen anywhere, ever. The Devonshires lived at Hardwick for a time but quickly moved over to the new/improved Chatsworth (within sight of Hardwick, maybe 15 miles away), once it was ready. Over the centuries, Hardwick was occasionally used as a hunting lodge or overflow guest-house or refuge, but mainly as the warehouse for Devonshire family items no longer fashionable nor wanted. Thus the impressive collection of items there. New Hardwick is now a National Trust property, and Old Hardwick, literally across the street, is a ruin and is managed by English Heritage. There is so much to see at Hardwick I'll have to do two posts, again.

Full frontal postcard view of Harwick; perfect symmetry

Compare with the above needlework, done by Bess herself, a representation
of the old Chatsworth

All of the towers at Hardwick have these colossal four-foot letters announcing
who lives there

Bess was very handy with needle and thread and obviously did not have a
self-esteem issue

Bess

In the great entry hall at Hardwick, and its long table, a reminder that Hardwick
is not very far from the Medieval world, when all the members of a household,
family, guests, and servants, took their meals together 

Same hall, hung everywhere with tapestries

Everywhere

Bess' coat of arms over a fireplace; flanked by tapestries

Needlework thought to have been done by Queen Mary
of Scots (Bess' Shrewsbury husband was her official
"host" for a time)

Another great hall, covered in tapestries, and above them, beautifully painted
plaster relief scenes; and period furniture

The long hall; when it was reported to Bess that the new
Burleigh House had a long hall of more than 120 feet, she
specified that Hardwick's should be 140 feet; it remains,
by volume at least, the largest of the long halls 

Cozy fireplace in the hall

The philosopher, Hobbes, who tutored the kids over at
Chatsworth

Francis Bacon; don't know what the Bess/Cavendish' Shrewsbury connection was,
but I am sure they were close personal buds

The Queen; full-length portrait

No end of tapestry

Or fine furniture