1st July: Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire

There are two – Hardwick Old Hall and the new Elizabethan one, built for Bess of Hardwick between 1590 and 1597  (and used in the films Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows 1 & 2).

Bess of Hardwick became a legend in her own lifetime. With four husbands and an accumulated wealth to rival the Queen of England, squire's daughter Bess went on to create two great houses: Chatsworth andHardwick Hall. A fortune-teller once told her that if she ever stopped building, she would die - something she would never forget.

THE RISE OF BESS
Bess was born in 1521 at what is now Hardwick Old Hall, then a country manor house.  At 20, she married a local man, Robert Barley, who died leaving her penniless.  But she caught the eye of Sir William Cavendish, who in 1549 had bought Chatsworth.   When he died, Bess took a third husband, Sir William St Loe, and by the time he died in 1565 Bess was a seriously rich woman.  Husband No. 4 was the Earl of Shrewsbury, one of the great 'catches' on the Elizabethan marriage market and she became a Countess.   The Earl was guardian to Mary Queen of Scots.  After a number of years he separated from Bess and she moved back  Hardwick Old Hall.  When the Earl died in 1590, Bess, now in her seventies, embarked upon the building of an ambitious new house employing one of the greatest architects of the day, Robert Smythson (also did Longleat). She died in 1608.

The “new” Hall

One of the longest Long Galleries

The windows were thought to be exceptionally large

Exceptional plasterwork

The strong room for documents

Bess hosted Mary Queen of Scots at Chatsworth for extended periods in 1569, 1570, and 1571, during which time they worked together on a number of embroideries.  In 1601, Bess ordered an inventory of the household furnishings including textiles – which survives - at her three properties at Chatsworth, Hardwick and Chelsea, , and she bequeathed these items to her heirs  in perpetuity. The 400-year-old collection, now known as the Hardwick Hall textiles, is the largest collection of tepestry, embroidery and canvaswork to have been preserved by a single private family.

So some of this work may have been sewed by Mary Queen of Scots