What the Chatsworth House English treasure house hides, where everyone feels like an aristocrat

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

House-treasury - this is what Chatsworth House is called in the UK, as well as beyond its borders. This estate not only keeps a collection of priceless exhibits - it unites them into something single, living, keeping the memory of the history of England and the history of one English family.

The Cavendish family and the Dukes of Devonshire are the owners of Chatsworth

Chatsworth House is located in Derbyshire, 241 kilometers north of London, on the banks of the Derwent River. It is the seat of the Dukes of Devonshire and has been building, complementing and decorating Chatsworth and his collections for generations. The estate dates back to 1549, when the title of Duke of Devonshire did not yet exist. William Cavendish, married to Bess of Hardwick, a famous Elizabethan lady, decided to settle in these lands. Since then, Chatsworth has belonged to the descendants of this family (since 1694, the title of duke was assigned to the head of the Cavendish family).

True, after the death of Sir William, Bess married again, and together with her husband, the Earl of Shrewsbury, continued to live in Chatsworth, which, among other things, became for some time the place of imprisonment of the Scottish Queen Mary Stuart. Bess laid the foundation for an extensive collection of embroidery and tapestries, which is still the pride of the estate. The new building in the Baroque style was built in 1687, and since then it has been rebuilt, reconstructed and modified in accordance with the requirements of the time and the intention of the owners.

For almost five hundred years of its existence, Chatsworth House passed from hand to hand from one head of the family to another. A particularly great contribution to the residence of the English aristocrats was made by the sixth Duke William Cavendish, who was both a builder and a gardener and a collector who filled Chatsworth with a huge number of trophies from his many travels.

The garden around the house is rightfully considered a pearl of garden art - it has a labyrinth, indispensable for the British, and a cascading fountain that has existed for more than three hundred years, and a greenhouse created by the first duke. For visitors to the estate, exhibitions are arranged in the garden, and some of the exhibits sometimes become part of the permanent exhibition of Chatsworth - if they turn out to be especially nice to the Cavendish family.

The English gardeners who glorified the Chatsworth landscapes and their own names are Lancelot Brown, who worked here in the middle of the 18th century, and Joseph Paxton, a scientist, architect and gardener who worked a hundred years later.

On a visit to the Duke of Devonshire

This house became open to the general public in the middle of the twentieth century, when the family was faced with the usual phenomenon for all large estates: the maintenance of large aristocratic residences was not within their power. One tax on land by 1950 amounted to seven million pounds. The eleventh Duke of Devonshire, together with his wife Deborah, decided to renovate the house and turn it into a cultural object accessible to visitors, because over the past centuries, one of the most powerful families in Britain has accumulated enough items of interest to art lovers.

Chatsworth House is distinguished primarily by the richness of the exposition - the total number of works of art here is extremely large, all of them are of great artistic and historical value. Consider, for example, a drawing by da Vinci, made by the master for the painting "Leda and the Swan", which was later lost. Thanks to the sixth duke, the Gallery of Sculptures, filled with masterpieces made of marble, also emerged.

In Chatsworth's rooms, you can immerse yourself in the atmosphere of the life of English aristocrats, see not only the interiors of different periods of the past, but also clothes, dishes, books, look behind the screens of bedrooms and into the bathrooms of Victorian times. All exhibits once served the Cavendish family. And until now, when the interiors of living rooms are updated, antique pieces of furniture become part of the exposition. Of the one hundred twenty-six rooms, twenty-six are open to the public - the rest are family properties, closed from prying eyes.

Movie decorations and living decorations

Chatsworth House has appeared in several famous films - on the estate was filmed "Pride and Prejudice" in 2005, "The Duchess" in 2008, the film "The Wolf Man" was also filmed here.

"The Duchess" is dedicated to the fate of one of the mistresses of the estate, Georgiana, nee Spencer. Becoming the wife of perhaps the most powerful aristocrat in Britain, she achieved success as a brilliant salon hostess and politician - as far as such an occupation was possible for a woman of the 18th century. Georgiana's friend was the French queen Marie Antoinette, and among her descendants - including Diana Spencer, Princess of Wales.

Thomas Gainsborough's famous portrait of Georgiana has an interesting history. The artist created a full-length image of the Duchess. After some time, the painting disappeared from Chatsworth House for a long time and was discovered only in the thirties of the XIX century in the house of an elderly teacher. To fit the artwork on the wall above the fireplace, the owner of the artwork decided to simply cut off the bottom of the canvas. The adventures of the portrait did not end there - it was also stolen, and returned, and redeemed for different owners, until in 1994 it was sold at auction to the eleventh Duke of Devonshire for more than four hundred thousand dollars. So, two hundred years later, the painting returned to its place.

The current, twelfth Duke of Devonshire, is still involved in the Chatsworth exhibit - which resembles a living treasury of favorite and memorable art for the family. On the territory of the estate and in the interiors of the house, classic masterpieces coexist with works of modern art, computer monitors are sometimes built into Victorian interiors.

On the lawns around the house, sheep are now and then, bringing a pastoral flavor to the environment: Derbyshire is a county famous for wool and cloth production, and this animal is highly respected in the ducal residence.

Chatsworth House really deserves the name "treasury", not fitting into the stereotypical notions of a museum or an art gallery, it seems to receive guests in its halls who have decided to look into the house of English aristocrats, and copes with its task with truly British impeccability and equanimity.

Among the wonders of Chatsworth is the famous trompe l'oeil picture, or trompe l'oeil, ingeniously built into the interior and has become a favorite exhibit of several generations of little Englishmen.

And in continuation of the theme, a story about how the Bolsheviks sold tsarist treasures to the West in bulk and by weight.