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lady_t_220So, I never did quite get round to telling about Chatsworth yesterday.
Chatsworth house, home of the Duke of Devonshire, is a sprawling, 18th-and-19th Century homage to overstated tastes situated in a really large chunk of Derbyshire parkland.
If it CAN be trimmed with gold, it IS trimmed with gold, and if a ceiling can be frescoed, you can bet your bottom dollar that the ceiling is frescoed. It's grand, you have to give it that due. Wild, lavish and pompous, coloured with an abundance of handpainted chinese wallpapers, satins and velvets, golds and silvers and unutterably overstated grandeur all of which combine into some heady, crazy other-world...
But the thing about Chatsworth is that it's soul-less. Herded round with 25 million other visitors there is no atmosphere of refinement or lavishness. No whiff of a great sense of history, it becomes more like one gloriously overstated tableau after another. Which is a shame because I'm sure there are tales of debauchery and intrigue just waiting to be told. it's just that kind of place.
The grounds were beautiful, but with so many people it felt more like a public park than a private garden. Any sense of mystery or romance that may have lingered around the historic maze or the miles of beautifully tree-lined avenues was absent, destroyeed by knowing that around each corner awaited another group of tourists with tired and squalling children and twenty foreign students taking snapshots of each other getting drenched by the spitting willow-tree.
It's the kind of house you should visit on a rainy Tuesday, when there's no on else there and you can actually soak up the feeling of a grand old folly and let your mind wander through the realities of life in such a place.
So yes, it is an amazing sight, and something you should all go to see when you have the chance. But my historic heart still belongs to Calke Abbey.
It's everything Chatsworth is not, and that's what makes it great.
It's crumbling and faded and lost, beautifully desolate in its own way, metamorphosing through time as the inhabitants became more reclusive and confined to one small area of the house untill eventually they just faded away. It's full of junk and strange collections and big empty rooms next to equally big rooms packed to the rafters with forgotten old things.
It's a house with a soul, and just a touch of craziness. The kind of place you can visit a hundred times and still not see everything. But I think the thing that makes it so much removed from somewhere like Chatworth is that it clings on to its air of uninhabited melancholy even when it is full and bursting with people. You can reach out and touch the dust and almost feel like you're disturbing something sacred that hasn't been disturbed for a hundred years. It's an odd place, with rambling gardens and strange follies and buildings that pop out of nowhere and it is thoroughly worth your time.
It too is best seen on a rainy Tuesday with no one else around. Though that will make the tunnel between the cellar and the brew-house just a little bit damp, it's worth it just to be able to poke around the Billiard room's cabinets without having to jostle your way through too many people.
(And if you can find the plaster cast of the dodo's head and foot, I'll give you a cookie.)
Thus ends the history lesson.
Kat's folks are leaving tomorrow evening and they're currently all downstairs trying to wedge all their luggage back into suitcases now they have so much souvenir shopping done ;)
They're having a home day, pretty much. Though I have no idea of either Kat or John are awake yet. :/
Chatsworth house, home of the Duke of Devonshire, is a sprawling, 18th-and-19th Century homage to overstated tastes situated in a really large chunk of Derbyshire parkland.
If it CAN be trimmed with gold, it IS trimmed with gold, and if a ceiling can be frescoed, you can bet your bottom dollar that the ceiling is frescoed. It's grand, you have to give it that due. Wild, lavish and pompous, coloured with an abundance of handpainted chinese wallpapers, satins and velvets, golds and silvers and unutterably overstated grandeur all of which combine into some heady, crazy other-world...
But the thing about Chatsworth is that it's soul-less. Herded round with 25 million other visitors there is no atmosphere of refinement or lavishness. No whiff of a great sense of history, it becomes more like one gloriously overstated tableau after another. Which is a shame because I'm sure there are tales of debauchery and intrigue just waiting to be told. it's just that kind of place.
The grounds were beautiful, but with so many people it felt more like a public park than a private garden. Any sense of mystery or romance that may have lingered around the historic maze or the miles of beautifully tree-lined avenues was absent, destroyeed by knowing that around each corner awaited another group of tourists with tired and squalling children and twenty foreign students taking snapshots of each other getting drenched by the spitting willow-tree.
It's the kind of house you should visit on a rainy Tuesday, when there's no on else there and you can actually soak up the feeling of a grand old folly and let your mind wander through the realities of life in such a place.
So yes, it is an amazing sight, and something you should all go to see when you have the chance. But my historic heart still belongs to Calke Abbey.
It's everything Chatsworth is not, and that's what makes it great.
It's crumbling and faded and lost, beautifully desolate in its own way, metamorphosing through time as the inhabitants became more reclusive and confined to one small area of the house untill eventually they just faded away. It's full of junk and strange collections and big empty rooms next to equally big rooms packed to the rafters with forgotten old things.
It's a house with a soul, and just a touch of craziness. The kind of place you can visit a hundred times and still not see everything. But I think the thing that makes it so much removed from somewhere like Chatworth is that it clings on to its air of uninhabited melancholy even when it is full and bursting with people. You can reach out and touch the dust and almost feel like you're disturbing something sacred that hasn't been disturbed for a hundred years. It's an odd place, with rambling gardens and strange follies and buildings that pop out of nowhere and it is thoroughly worth your time.
It too is best seen on a rainy Tuesday with no one else around. Though that will make the tunnel between the cellar and the brew-house just a little bit damp, it's worth it just to be able to poke around the Billiard room's cabinets without having to jostle your way through too many people.
(And if you can find the plaster cast of the dodo's head and foot, I'll give you a cookie.)
Thus ends the history lesson.
Kat's folks are leaving tomorrow evening and they're currently all downstairs trying to wedge all their luggage back into suitcases now they have so much souvenir shopping done ;)
They're having a home day, pretty much. Though I have no idea of either Kat or John are awake yet. :/
