England 03/05 Pt 1

EC's guess at what we did today was a good try, but wrong. Unbeknownst to me, we were not far away from Crich Tramway Museum. 

We drove for less than half an hour and pulled into the monster carpark at Chatsworth House. Ever since I saw the tv programme Love in a Cold Climate, I've found the Mitford sisters fascinating and I've read a couple of biographies, as well as the original books and much trivia along the way.

Jessica was my favourite sister, especially after her book exposing the fraudulent American funeral business. Alas in subsequent years, not much has changed in the funeral industry.

Deborah Mitford was the last sister to pass die, in 2014, and lived at Chatsworth House by way of her husband Andrew Cavendish (keep the name Cavendish in mind for later) who went on to acquire the title Duke of Devonshire with Deborah gaining the title Duchess of Devonshire. Why not Duke of Derbyshire, the location of estate? The title was already in use.

No doubt the house is amazing inside but we've seen plenty of old and grand house interiors in our time. We just visited to see the garden.

We parked and walked towards where everyone else was walking. We paid a good bit for parking and then had to pay again to visit the garden. 

Armed with a garden map, we headed off to see the garden.Wow, this is all so impressive. We walked up a gentle slope to see this cascading fountain. We were exhausted already. "We can't do this can we hon?" "No." "One hundred acres of garden is too much for us."

But I had a cunning plan. As we entered the garden I had seen a four seater plus driver open scooter type vehicle. We returned to the gate, investigated the ride and booked. I think it was £5 each. We had a while to wait, so it was time for brunch and coffee at the adjacent cafe.

The access road was  moved, the bridge moved and rebuilt and the course of the river was changed just so that visitors to Chatsworth could pause and admire its splendour. 

By Rob Bendall(For more information, see my userpage...), Attribution, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6804943

The photos are a bit out of order. It has been a messy post that should have been properly planned. 

The house has been rebuilt, extended and altered a number of times over the centuries. The current Duke and Duchess of Devonshire still live there. Peregrine, the present Duke is the son of Andrew and Deborah (Mitford) Cavendish. I believe it was Deborah who set up the charitable trust responsible for running the estate.

The fountain is pressure fed by a lake above and so subject to drought. At the moment there is so much water leakage along the way, the fountain is only half the height it used to be. It will cost hundreds of thousands of pounds to repair.

Greenhouse.

The views of natural rolling hills really stunned me. Natural? Apparently not.

The hills were landscaped by Lancelot (Capability) Brown. Most of the garden design was the responsibility of Sir Joseph Paxton in the 1800s. Hels mentions him and Chatsworth in this post back in 2011. 

Ducks at our feet as we sat under umbrellas and ate our brunch.

A little enclave of modern sculptures.

See the glass panel built into the wall. 

This was once a beautiful and very tall greenhouse but by 1930's it badly needed renovation and restoration. Coal to burn for the heating was hard to come by during WWII and so it was decided to demolish the greenhouse, aside from the stone footings.

We were fortunate to visit in Spring with much blooming in the garden.

This path leads up to the water storage above.

We walked to this point. 

Then up this path...

to see this cascading fountain. This is where most of the water leakage occurs, and for us walking stamina ended too. 

More in the next post.