Hardwick Hall

About this place

In the 1590s, when glass cost more than stone, a woman past sixty built a house with more window than wall and set her initials, ES, in openwork stone on each of its six roof towers so that anyone approaching across the fields could read who paid for it. That was Bess of Hardwick, the richest woman in England after Elizabeth I, and her house has barely changed since she moved into it in 1597: the Dukes of Devonshire who inherited it made Chatsworth their seat and kept Hardwick as a gilded attic for the family past. The result is an Elizabethan interior that has survived almost nowhere else. The house climbs floor by floor, each grander than the one below, until you reach the High Great Chamber with its painted plaster frieze of hunting scenes running under the ceiling, and then the Long Gallery along the whole east front, one of the longest in England, hung with towering sixteenth-century tapestries including the Gideon set Bess bought herself. The textiles are the real treasure: some of the embroideries were worked by Bess and the women of her household, and together they form one of the most important Elizabethan textile collections in Britain. Do not expect French gilt and glitter; the beauty here is dark oak, rush matting and faded thread, and the rooms are kept deliberately dim to protect it all. Beside the house stand the ruins of the Old Hall, which Bess built only a few years earlier and then abandoned. It has no roof, but you can usually climb its stair for a view over the new house and the countryside, and it is covered by the same ticket, though access is sometimes limited to the courtyard for repairs, so ask at reception. The exterior will be familiar to a much wider audience as Malfoy Manor in the first Deathly Hallows film, which is often all it takes to persuade children to come along. Inside, it is stone stairs and narrow corridors, so the upper floors are no place for a pushchair or anyone who finds climbing hard; the gardens and the roughly 2,500-acre estate, by contrast, are level and open every day from early morning. Hardwick sits well outside the national park, near Chesterfield and practically within sight of the M1 at junction 29, so it is a car trip: about 40 minutes from Bakewell via Chesterfield, a quarter of an hour from the motorway, with parking included in the ticket (sat-nav S44 5QJ). The house opens late, at 11:00, and closes early, at 15:30 with last entry 45 minutes before, which is not long for a house that deserves two hours, so arrive for opening; the garden, by contrast, opens at 09:00 and the park at 08:30. A house-and-garden ticket is £23 for an adult and £57.50 for a family of two adults and three children, free to National Trust and English Heritage members, and no advance booking is needed. Outside the main season the hall opens on fewer days and can close for conservation work, so check the opening calendar on the official site before driving out on a short December day.