- Article |
- Discussion |
- Edit |
- History
Bess the builder left many fine homes
Local historian Maxwell Craven marks this year’s 400th anniversary of the death of Bess of Hardwick with a look at the many houses she built during her fascinating life.
Bess married four husbands and, according to her epitaph, built four houses but, in reality, she built many more than that.
We always associate her, of course, with the incomparable Hardwick Hall but that was merely the finest of her country houses.
And the fact that Hardwick was architecturally a success was partly due to a certain amount of trial and error with the others.
After a childhood of relative poverty at Old Hardwick Hall, followed by a stint in the London townhouse of her cousins the Zouches of Codnor, Bess married, in 1542, Robert Barlow, a sickly youth who was the son of a neighbour.
He died on Christmas Eve 1544. There were no children and no opportunity to improve Barlow Hall, a house about which little is known, as it was demolished in 1589.
Bess’ second husband, Sir William Cavendish, was a much better prospect. He married Bess as his third wife at the extraordinary time of 2am on August 20, 1547, at Bradgate House, near Loughborough, where he was staying with the father of the future Queen Jane.
A minor gentleman from Cavendish in Suffolk, he had become super-rich in Royal service, especially as a commissioner for dissolving the monasteries and as royal treasurer.
Bess persuaded him to sell much of his land elsewhere, especially in his native Suffolk, and buy, for £600, the lead-rich Chatsworth estate in Derbyshire, which John Agard had not long before bought from Bess’ brother-in-law, Francis Leche.
Starting in 1551, Bess built an entirely new house, around a courtyard, which was five storeys high in places. The builders used plans drawn up by mason Roger Worthe.
This trend for tall houses had begun in the previous century with Prior Overton’s Tower at Repton and had been improved upon by courtier Ralph, Lord Cromwell, at Tattershall in Lincolnshire and then at South Wingfield.
Eastwood Hall, a much smaller house along the same lines, was built at the end of the century by the Reresbys at Ashover. The immediate inspiration may have been Henry VIII’s Richmond Palace with which Sir William was familiar.
For Bess, this sort of super-tall house was clearly something she wanted but the use of a courtyard – still an item which implied status – was also a must. So, as a pragmatist, she built high round a courtyard, with a magnificent gatehouse incorporated into the west side and a long gallery high up on the south front with stair towers at the angles.
Now, most people who built houses in the Peak at this time used local stone from quarries on their estates, but not Bess.
She decided to build in brick, with stone only deployed as dressings. This was a magnificently extravagant gesture. No wonder that the once opulently rich Sir William was £5,000 in debt when he died!
Work on Chatsworth continued until 1576. In August 1559, Bess married again, 18 months after having been widowed.
This time her husband was another courtier, but from an older and grander family, Sir William St Loe of Tormarton Court, Gloucestershire.
He also owned the dissolved monastery of Glastonbury which, needless to say, came to Bess on his death in 1564.
It seems likely that he continued to bankroll Chatsworth; he was devoted to her and she exploited his affection remorselessly, to the benefit of her existing children.
The couple had no children which meant that it left all the more for her to spend on her Cavendish brood.
Once St Loe had died, Bess set about wooing her future fourth husband.
So far, her social status had risen steadily over three marriages. The crowning glory socially came three years later when she became the second wife of one of the kingdom’s leading grandees, George Talbot, 6th Earl of Shrewsbury.
George’s land stretched from Shropshire, through Staffordshire, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire to Yorkshire.
George built a tower house at Sheffield in 1574, which still survives, and had already erected a hunting lodge just south east of the city.
Pre-Bess, he had also built a 30-room tower house at Buxton which Charles Cotton later described as “a pallace”.
His chief seat in the area was Wingfield Manor, by this date considered rather old-fashioned.
However, in 1583, just as work was getting under way, Lord Shrewsbury and Bess separated and he excluded her from his houses and tried to cut off her income.
He had thought to bring her to heel but, in truth, she had got her status assured and only needed to keep her allowance. She rebuffed him.
Worksop, then, probably owed quite a lot in concept to Bess, it is just that she never was able to enjoy it and she did not, therefore, itemize it as one of her houses on her memorial in Derby Cathedral.
The architect, Robert Smythson, was poached from the Willoughbys at Wollaton and had previously worked at Longleat. He was a daring man of ideas, which appealed to Bess; Worksop was probably evolved by the two of them.
The traditional courtyard was omitted completely and Worksop Manor went up to as many as six storeys in places, although the main, central, part of the house was of three. The state rooms were on the second floor rather than the first which was a most unusual arrangement.
The result was a most spectacularly tall house, with a profusion of turrets and towers, and lavish use was made of glass.
The great hall was still to one side of the entrance passage, however. Although this house was destroyed by fire in 1762, another multi-storey house on the estate, Manor Lodge, survives, albeit much mutilated.
Bess may not have collaborated over its design but it clearly owes much to the main house.
From 1583, Bess, now on her own, was cut off from profuse quantities of cash. She went back to Chatsworth and probably the hunting tower, or stand, was erected at this time on the hill behind the main house, almost certainly to a clever and pretty design by Smythson.
Then, in 1589, her brother James Hardwick died without leaving any children.
His second marriage in 1576 to Elizabeth Archer of Lound, Nottinghamshire, seems to have inspired him to begin enlarging the ancestral home at Hardwick, aided and abetted by Bess herself, driven from Chatsworth by her eldest son’s support of Lord Shrewsbury.
Bess re-fashioned the house to suit herself, aided by a financial settlement arrived at with Shrewsbury in 1587.
The central, gabled, part probably represents James’ work.
To this quite generously sized residence Bess added squarish, tower-like, four-storey additions at either end, east and west, with very lofty state rooms at the top.
Inward from there were two thinner, taller towers each of five storeys over a basement, which also included the staircases.
There was a state-of-the-art centrally placed through hall, too. Lavish chimneypieces and plasterwork – some the latter survives in the Hill Great Chamber at the west end – embellished the additions.
The problem was that Bess didn’t have an architect. Added to which, she seems to have had several changes of mind during the work which produced, when all was said and done, a complete turkey.
The house, finished in 1591, just didn’t work as a concept at all. Nevertheless, she lived in it until 1597 and it was used as a staff and guest wing until Hardwick was abandoned for the new Chatsworth in Queen Anne’s reign, when the east range was partly dismantled.
The west wing was occupied by the Hardwick housekeeper and other staff until the 1870s when it, too, was unroofed.
In November 1590, Lord Shrewsbury died leaving Bess seriously well off once again.
She didn’t hesitate, starting building at Hardwick all over again just 300 yards away, but this time with Robert Smythson to control her ideas.
The shell of the new hall was finished in 1593 and she moved in from the old hall in 1597.
This new hall at Hardwick was, again, really tall, the flat roof embellished with six projecting towers, intended as banqueting houses, set away from the corners to make the facades more striking.
The state rooms were on the upper floor and there was a through central hallway below. All was on a magnificent scale and parts of the house again were five storeys high, although this time, Smythson built it symmetrically on all sides and in such a way that people did not realise from the outside where the different levels lay. It was all done with mezzanines and two spectacular meandering staircases which began off either side of the hall and moved progressively across the house as they went up.
Also about this time, Smythson drew plans for a hunting lodge at Blackwall-in-Peak, where Sir William Cavendish had acquired an estate from the Blackwalls.
It was a miniature Hardwick but with four towers, not six, and a similar hall. Unfortunately, it was either never built or started and then abandoned.
The plans are undated but could have been drawn up very late in Bess’ life with her death killing off the project.
The new hall at Hardwick was not Bess’ final effort at house building. Her ancestor, Joscelin de Stainsby had acquired from the Savages of Stainsby in 1275, Hardwick along with land at Heath, Hardstoft and Stainsby.
At Oldcotes (now Owlcotes), in the parish of Heath, Bess erected another smaller version of Hardwick for William Cavendish, her second and favourite son, to move into, for old Hardwick was getting crowded in the early 1590s.
Robert Smythson began the building in the spring of 1593.
The centrepiece had a three-arched loggia and was crowned by a fantastical shaped pediment, from which the rest of the facade stepped back in no fewer than four stages, ending in corner towers similar to those at Hardwick.
The state rooms were again on the top floor and the exterior suggests that the main block was only two storeys over a high basement, but in truth there may have been mezzanines and extra storeys inside not apparent from the exterior, as at Hardwick.
The house went up in tandem with new Hardwick, being completed by the same workmen in 1599.
It eventually passed from William Cavendish to the Honourable William Pierrepont, younger son of Robert, 1st Earl of Kingston, in 1641.
He appears to have added an extra storey to the house and it was used for 70 years as a residence for a younger son and his heirs.
It was assessed for hearth tax in 1670 on no fewer than 48 hearths, making it around half the size of Hardwick.
In 1711, Pierrepont’s line became extinct and the house passed to the 2nd Duke of Kingston, who promptly allowed his agent to demolish it and use the materials to build himself a new house nearby.
Bess had other building projects, for which she probably employed Robert Smythson. Her tomb in Derby Cathedral, unaltered over four centuries, was designed by him and approved by her prior to her death, and he probably designed the almshouses behind the church in Full Street which were built in 1604-05 and replaced by Joseph Pickford’s palladian ones in 1777.
Newcastle House, on the north side of Derby Market Place was, we know, in existence before 1637, when the 1st Earl of Newcastle, Bess’ senior legitimate grandson, entertained Charles I there. As 1st Duke, he rebuilt it after 1660, too. When it was finally demolished, it turned out to have a Tudor brick core and a 15th-century wing.
It was probably built originally for Lord Shrewsbury, who addressed letters from Derby, so quite possibly Bess had a hand in that, too.
Finally, there are those of which we are less certain. Welbeck was certainly rebuilt by Smythson, but perhaps was not directly in Bess’ ambit. Tutbury Castle, where Mary, Queen of Scots, stayed, belonged to Shrewsbury and the hall range there looks distinctly Hardwick-like, as does the rebuilt Abbot’s lodging at Leicester Abbey.
Not only that, but the architectural legacy of her houses being high and light lived on after she had died, in places like Bolsover, Tupton, old Hassop and old Wingerworth.
As in everything in which she involved herself, she made a distinct mark and, in the case of her houses, one that has endured, in some cases, for four centuries.
FEEDBACK
Did you enjoy this article? If so, why not comment on it? Perhaps you disagree with something in it, or you know something the writer doesn't and can add some extra facts. You may want to ask a question about this article. Making a contribution is easy - either click 'edit' to insert more information or 'discussion' and then 'add comment.' This is your site. Please feel free to use it to the full and share your memories, thoughts and knowledge about Derbyshire with others.
If there is no 'edit' link showing it means the article has either previously been published in the Derby Evening Telegraph, or it has been protected by the site administrator and cannot be edited.'
|
Other tags that are relevant to Bess the builder left many fine homes Help us to improve You&Yesterday by adding more tags to this article. Simply edit this page, find this area and add the words in a list separated by commas next to the *. To find out more about tagging please click here. |
County: Derbyshire
Return to You_and_Yesterday
Share this page: del.icio.us 
| digg 
| Fark 
| Furl 
| BlogMarks 