Chatsworth House - History

Chatsworth House - Overview of the structure of the existing building: 

History of the building and furnishing of Chatsworth are quite complex. The diagram in this brochure gives an idea about the structure of the house and stables (but carriage house at the back of the stables is largely omitted). North is to the left and the west front of the house is at the bottom of the page. The main block of the house is on the right. It is built around a courtyard and was rebuilt in its present form over about 20 years from the 1687th The long north wing on the left was added in the early nineteenth century. The long building between the two is the Conservative Walk, and from 1970 Display Greenhouse and 1 Duke's Green House is in front of it. The house is built on a slope. Land surface is lower in the northern and western side than on the south and east (and so is the floor of ground floor space inside). East of the first floor premises in the north wing is actually on the ground floor level as viewed from the garden, but the ground floor rooms underneath them to see on a gently sloping lawn, so they're not really underground. 

Chatsworth House - Early Chatsworth: 

There have been a castle here since the second half of the 16th century, but Chatsworth's history dates back to Anglo-Saxon times. The name is a corruption of "Chetelsourde" which means "Chetel's Manor". Chetel was broken after the Norman Conquest and Chatsworth ceased to be a large estate until the 15th century when it was purchased by a family called Leche, which already owned other property nearby. They may have closed the first park at Chatsworth and built a house on the high ground in what is now the south-eastern part of the garden. In 1549, they sold all their property in the area of Sir William Cavendish, treasurer of the King's Chamber and then husband of the famous Bess of Hardwick. Bess was the daughter of a Derbyshire squire called John of Hardwick and she persuaded her husband to sell all his properties in Suffolk and settle in his own county. 

Cavendish and Bess began to build their new house in the 1553rd They chose a place near the river, which was verified by digging a series of reservoirs, which doubled as fish ponds. The house was on the same site as the current main block and had the same basic layout. It was a square about 170 feet (52 m) from north to south and 190 feet (58 meters) from east to west, with a large central courtyard. Front door was on the western or river bank, which was adorned with four turrets or towers, and the great hall, still in focus in the house in the medieval tradition, was on the east side of the courtyard, where they painted the hall is now. Sir William died in 1557, but Bess finished the house in the 1560s and lived there with her fourth husband, George Talbot, 6th Earl of Shrewsbury. In 1568 Shrewsbury was entrusted with the custody of Mary, Queen of Scots, who brought his prisoner to Chatsworth on several occasions from 1570 onwards. She was lodged in the apartment above the great hall which is now known as Queen of Scots room. It was on the top floor and stand on the farm. Bess died in 1608 and Chatsworth on his second son William, who was created 1st Earl of Devonshire in the 1618th 

Chatsworth House - Early 20th century Chatsworth: 

In the early 20 century social change and taxes began to affect Devonshire lifestyle. When the 8th Duke died in 1908 over half a million pounds of inheritance tax due. It was a small amount compared to what was to follow the forty-two years later, but the property was already burdened by debt accumulated from the 6th Duke's extravagance and the failure of the 7th Duke's business projects in Barrow-in-Furness, and British agriculture had been depressed since the 1870s. In 1912 the family sold twenty-five books printed by William Caxton, and a collection of 1,347 volumes of plays, which had been taken over by the 6th Duke, including four Shakespeare folios and thirty-nine Shakespeare quartos, the Huntington Library in California. Tens of thousands of hectares of land in Somerset, Sussex and Derbyshire were sold during and immediately after World War I. In 1920 the family's London Mansion Devonshire House, which occupies a three hectare (12,000 m²) site on Piccadilly, was sold to developers and demolished, and a much smaller house at 2 Carlton Gardens near The Mall was acquired as a replacement. Many of the contents of Devonshire House were moved to Chatsworth. The Great Conservatory in the garden at Chatsworth (see below) was demolished because it required ten men to run it, and huge quantities of coal to heat it. All the plants had died during the war, since no coal was available for non-essential purposes. There was also talk about pulling down 6: e Duke's north wing, as shall be deemed to have any aesthetic or historical value, to reduce operating costs, but nothing came of it. Chiswick House, the famous Palladian villa in the suburbs of West London, which Devonshires had inherited when the 4th The duke had married Lord Burlington's daughter was sold to Brentford Council in 1929. 

Nevertheless, life at Chatsworth continues much as before. Household were driven controller. Domestic workers who were still available, probably more in the countryside than in cities. The staff at Chatsworth at this time consisted of a butler, under butler, groom of the chambers, Valet and three servants, housekeeper, Duchess girl, eleven house maids and two women sew, cook, two kitchen maids, vegetable girl, two or three scullery maids, two of which still have space for girls and a dairy maid, six laundry maids, secretaries and duchess. All of these thirty-eight or thirty-nine people lived in the house. Daily staff has the strange man, upholsterer, cook, two women scrubbing, laundry porter, boiler man, coal man, two porter's Lodge waiters, two night fireman, night porter, two window cleaners and a team of carpenters, plumbers and electricians. The clerk of works supervised the maintenance of the house and other properties on the estate. There was also grooms, drivers and gunners. Haven staff was somewhere between eighty of 6 Duke's time, and a dozen of the early 21st century. There was also a librarian, Francis Thompson, who wrote the first book-length account Chatsworth since 6: e Duke's handbook.

Most of the British country houses were put to institutional use during the Second World War. Some of them were used as barracks were seriously damaged, but the 10th Duke, who expected that the school girls would make better tenants than soldiers, arranged for Chatsworth to be occupied by Penhros College, now defunct girls in primary school from Colwyn Bay in Wales. The contents of the house was packed away for eleven days and 300 girls and their teachers moved into a six-year stay. The whole house was used, including the state rooms, which were converted into dormitories. Breathe in the sleeping girls, because the fungus to grow back some of the images. The house was not nice so many people with a lack of hot water, but there were compensations, such as skating on the Canal Pond. The girls grew vegetables in the garden as a contribution to the war effort.

In 1944, Kathleen Kennedy, sister of John F. Kennedy, married William Cavendish, Marques of Hartington, the elder son of the 10th Duke of Devonshire. But he was killed in action in Belgium later in 1944, and she died in a plane crash in 1948. 

His younger brother Andrew, who was married to Deborah Milford, one of the "Milford Girls" and sister of Diana Milford, Nancy Mitford and Unity Mitford, was the 11th Duke in 1950. 

Chatsworth House - Modern Chatsworth: 

The modern history of Chatsworth beginning in 1950. The family had not yet moved back in after the war, if it has not been hit by inheritance tax over time, but would have done it without selling assets or are forced to commercialize the property. 10. Duke had transferred his property to his son during his life, hoping to avoid death duties, but he died a few weeks too early for the lifetime exemption to apply and the tax was levied at 80% for the whole property. The amount owed was £ 7 million. Some of the family's advisors considered the situation to be irretrievable, and there was a proposal to transfer Chatsworth to the nation as a V & A in the north, but the Duke decided to keep the family home if he possibly could. He sold many thousands of hectares of land transferred Hardwick Hall to the National Trust in place of charges and sold some good illustrations from Chatsworth. The family's Sussex house Compton Place was leased to a school. The effect of the inheritance tax was reduced to a certain degree of historically low value of art in the postwar period and the increased land values subsequent to 1950 in post-war agricultural revival, and on the face of loss was significantly less than 80% in terms of physical assets. In Derbyshire 35,000 acres (142 km ²) were selected out of eighty-three thousand. The Bolton Abbey estate in Yorkshire and Lismore Castle estate in Ireland remained in the family. But it took seventeen years to complete negotiations with the British tax authorities, while interest paid in the meantime. The Chatsworth Estate is now managed by the Trustees of the Chatsworth Settlement, which was established in 1946. 

10. Duke was pessimistic about the future of houses like Chatsworth and has no plans to move back in after the war. After Penrhos College back in 1945 the only people who slept in the house were two house maids, but during the winter of 1948-49 the house was cleaned and cleared for reopening to the public by two Hungarian women who had been Kathleen Kennedy's cook and maid in London and a team of their compatriots. In the mid-1950s, perhaps encouraged by the election and reelection of a Conservative government, which suggests that rural can not be sentenced after all, began the new Duke and Duchess to think about moving back into pre-war house had pleaded exclusively on a large staff to comfort, and lacked modern facilities. The house was rewired, plumbing was revised, and six separate occasions staff was created to replace the small staff bedrooms and municipal hall employees. Including staff apartments, seventeen bathrooms were added to the handful that had existed before. 6. Duke's cave kitchen was abandoned and a new one was created closer to the family dining room. The family rooms were painted, the carpets were brought out of the store, and the curtains were repaired or replaced. Duke and Duchess and their three children moved across the park from Edensor House in 1959. 

In 1981 the family trustees created a separate Charitable Trust called the Chatsworth House Trust to preserve the house and its surroundings. This trust has been awarded a 99-year lease on the house, its essence, garden, park and some woods, a total of 1822 hectares (7.4 km ²), with an annual rent of £ 1 family sold some works of art, mainly old master drawings, which could not be put on regular display, to erect a multi-million pound endowment fund. The family is represented on the trust council, but there is a majority of non-family members. The family pays a market rent for use of his private apartments in the house. Operating expenditure of the house and grounds are around £ 4 million years. 

The dowager Duchess of Devonshire (Deborah Mitford) is very active in promoting the property and increase its visitor income. She has been responsible for many additions to the gardens, including the labyrinth, the kitchen and cottage gardens, and several commissions for contemporary sculpture. She is the author of six books on various aspects of Chatsworth and its property. Duke died in 2004 and was succeeded by his son Peregrine, 12 and current Duke.