Hardwick Hall

En un regard

Le château en bref

Hardwick Hall stands on an escarpment in eastern Derbyshire, not far from the M1 motorway, at the heart of a National Trust estate. It is one of the most spectacular Elizabethan houses in England, designed in the 1590s for Elizabeth Talbot, Countess of Shrewsbury, better known as Bess of Hardwick, one of the richest and most ambitious women of her time. The house is striking for the scale of its windows, so vast that the phrase "more glass than wall" has stuck to it. Its six towers, topped by openwork balustrades, bear the initials "ES" of the woman who commissioned it in stone letters. Inside, the Long Gallery, the great staircase and the State Bedchamber preserve an exceptional collection of tapestries, embroideries and furniture, part of which already appears in the inventory drawn up in 1601. A short distance away stand the ruins of the Old Hall, the family home that Bess enlarged before building the new house. Owned by the Cavendish family, Dukes of Devonshire, for more than three centuries, Hardwick was handed over to the National Trust in 1958 and opened to the public in 1959.