Our day at Chatsworth started after Breakfast (see following blog entry) and we arrived early before the 11 am opening. Gave Gail a chance to convince me to go shopping up at the stable block. I sat and sulked while she strolled the stalls and stores with great delight.
There are few shots of the house as it is currently being restored, stonework replaced, carvings re-carved and the window frames are being gilded as are the finials on top of all the roof mounted earns, gargoyles and grotesques. The building will dazzle in all its past golden glory on completion. This shot is of the entry drive once through the main gates. A Boar and Wolf guard the road. For lots of tedious information about the family and the house go to
http://www.chatsworth.org/ which has all the authorised stuff about the place.
What we have put here is just the bits we especially liked.
The serpent below is part of the family crest and is evident everywhere you look. It is the symbol of caution and a warning to the family that danger lurks at every obstacle and challenge or enterprise. It can be found on the baby carriages and prams, over doorways, everywhere. The two rampant stags which stand above the serpent in the full crest sort of counter the warning by implying magesty over all, strength endurance and agression.
The visit to the house is mainly a walk through a private art and antiquities collections gallery so we took photos of thousands of things but I have only included a few here that were memorable to us.
The dog below especially captivated Gail.
The sculpture hall was a place to take a day out of your life on its own.
A walk in the gardens is not complete without a cone or two.
These are the famous cascades. All water features, huge fountains and most of the ablutions plumbing for the house and grounds are fed from a reservoir built up in the hills and so all the water is fed under gravity and only used once. In dryer times, like now, the fountains and cascades are reduced in flow or turned off completely to preserve the water.
We were pleased they were working .
This is the emperor's fountain, for many centuries the highest plume of water known.
The Family live in the house and therefore the artworks are displayed for the tourists as much as for the family.
Many pieces are visible from the family occupied rooms and have to be hunted out if you want to see them. It is interesting because unlike so many National Trust places, the art collection tracks the family's art acquisition history and there are lots of modern pieces which appealed to us, Hockney's, Hurst's and artists and works unknown to us but really interesting. Gail loved these dogs too.
the inner courtyard of the house is also getting its windows gilded, one wall has been done but I liked the balcony in isolated grandeur. It will be ott when all the windows and doors are gold leaf.
In the tourist walk in the house corridor just behind the fountain above we found and had to snap this huge byzantine foot, (over a meter long) I loved the way the light fell on it through the window from the courtyard window. The other foot has recently been found but somewhere far away and I can't recall what the guard man told us as he escorted us gently away from poking at the treasure..
This is the marble veiled vestal virgin in the german oak room.
Amazing carving, the veil looks so real.
I have no idea how they know she is a virgin though.
This is a Damien Hurst self sculpture (so we were told) showing his skin hung from his musculature in bronze. Beautifully formed and cast. Say what you will about his recent popular works, the man has a skill worth his fame.
The image below is a framed digital screen which has an almost infinite number of colour combinations which roll through as you watch. No viewing experience is ever the same. We just loved this work. There are 9 separate areas of colour zones, background, hair, eyebrows, eyes, pupils, face, shirt, lips, iris. Ten if you count the frame surround which changes too. Some 14,000 colours in the palette, to the power of 10 is a big enough number of variations and then you have the innumerable tonal and brightness variations and the speed of colour change variations. We stood there far too long. The snaps below are selected from a series Gail took over a period of less than a minute.
The grand hall entry and stairs.
The library.
Dinner is served. Silver is dusted weekly and polished as necessary by the silver porter. Not a job for the easily bored.
Another part of the sculpture room
And as we do not have any furry animal shots this blog, here are some bronze and marble substitutes.
How could you not want to give these guys a cuddle.
So glad we went to Chatsworth, would recommend it, not on school holidays or weekends though. We took the taster tour and allowed a whole day to walk the grounds and return to re-visit the house before it closed for the day.
There is no hurry to go there again, the house has been open to public tourism since the 1700's and will continue to be the home of the Cavendish family for as long as the trust lasts, there are three generations living now and all have male offspring so the tenure is secure.
Sort of had to include this Damien Hurst work as the tail piece.
One of the enduring themes of Chatsworth portraiture is that the family complain they have always been at the artist's mercy when posing for portraits, many family images are less than flattering or don't capture the person as well as the artistic fashions and style of the time.
This painting above, commissioned by the family asked Hurst to paint their favourite horse.
He decided she had a particularly uninteresting head an so presented the family with a superb, and I mean superb, image of a horse's arse.
I don't know if he was taking the piss, or if the family were bemused, but it hangs proudly in plain view and the family continue to support Hurst's work, providing him accommodation and studio space in the house.....
An interesting side bar note on how these grand homes work.
To protect the house from the savage death duties of UK tax law, the family don't own the house, they rent the parts they live in off the charitable trust. The trust reinvests tourist income back into running the place and probably does a bit of other good stuff. The family pays rent set at market rates by independent valuers and the family pays from its other earnings. Hence if they want to use the library, the grand dining room or the sculpture hall, for example, for their own purposes, they have to give notice to the trust and have the rental for the short term use valued and paid before use. A bit of a sacrifice to live in the family home perhaps, but they are rather well positioned in banking and industry so you need not be concerned for their well being..... All the land and money was originally gifted to the family by King William/Queen Mary who the first duke helped to gain the English throne. So really its only fair the humble English taxpayer gets to have a look in.
