The Gardens of Chatsworth

View of Chatworth from the bridge.

Sunny and cold Tuesday just passed. Spring is not quite in the air but the yet unflowering crocuses and daffodils have emerged green and full in the tiny plots surrounding the trees on East End Avenue.

Last night at Sotheby’s there was a lecture given by His Grace The Duke of Devonshire on “The Gardens of Chatsworth” to benefit the scholarship fund of the New York School of Interior Design.

The Benefit Co-Chairmen are Mr. and Mrs. Sid R. Bass, and the Vice Chairmen are Charlotte Moss and Barry Friedberg. The Benefit is being presented by Michael I. Sovern, Chairman of Sotheby’s, with Inge Heckel, President of the New York School of Interior Design.

Bunny Williams and Betsy Ruprecht

The Duke of Devonshire and Jamie Niven

Kitty Hawks and Pat Schoenfeld

John Rosselli and Wendy Moonan

Fernanda Kellogg, Bill Bucksmith, and Courtney Coleman

The 12th Duke of Devonshire lives at Chatsworth, in Derbyshire, one of the most famous houses in the world, which was built by his ancestors beginning in the the 16th century when the land was acquired in 1549 by Bess of Hardwick and William Cavendish who was Treasurer of the Chamber to Henry VIII.

Bess is a figure of legend who married four times, bore her only children by Cavendish, her second husband, and in her lifetime acquired land and power. Land was where the British aristocracy concentrated their wealth for centuries, and through primogeniture (the eldest son inherits all), families maintained their wealth for generations. And their houses. This ended in the 20th century when the British tax system basically confiscated the properties by placing such a high inheritance tax on them they had to be sold (and/or the houses razed). Chatsworth is one of the rare ones which has remained somewhat in the family.

Sir Wiliam Cavendish c. 1550.

Bess of Hardwick, Lady Cavendish.

Chatsworth from across the River Derwent.

Background: Bess’ son, also William was made the 1st Earl of Devonshire by William and Mary in thanks for his support of William’s acceding to the throne. In 1694, the 4th Earl became the 1st Duke. His father had been the one to raze the decaying first Chatsworth house and put up the beginnings of the house that exists today.

The 1st duke also focused on the garden, making it the complement to the grand new (and classical) house. Daniel Defoe came to visit and called it “the most pleasant garden and the most beautiful palace in the world.”


	William Spencer Compton, the 6th Duke of Devonshire (1790 - 1858).

The 4th duke who increased the family fortunes through his marriage to a great heiress (Lord Burlington’s daughter), hired “Capability” Brown to design his new “natural” landscape turning terraces into slopes and parterres into lawns, and parks, planting thousands of trees. Some of Brown’s designs took a century to realize the effect he planned.

The 5th duke married Georgiana Spencer (an ancestor of Diana, Princess of Wales) with whom he would eventually occupy a ménage a trios with one Lady Elizabeth Foster (who would bear the duke two children).

It was the son of Georgiana and the 5th duke – always known as the Bachelor Duke – who augmented the estate and the house with his collections and connoisseurship. At 21, he inherited the title plus nine enormous houses – Chatsworth, Hardwick Hall (built by Bess), Lismore Castle in Ireland; Bolton Abbey, Londesborough Hall, Holker Hall, Chiswick House, Burlington House and Devonshire House (the latter two in London), along with 200,000 acres of land. This duke built the immense sculpture gallery wing to the house.

When Death Duties were invented in England at the end of the 19th century, the great estates were seriously depleted. The 9th duke, Victor, who inherited in 1908, had raise about $50 million in today’s currency in order to keep his properties. More property was lost to settling death duties by the 10th and then the 11th duke, Andrew, father of the present duke.


Looking south from the Blue Drawing Room, across Cibber's Sea Horse Fountain in the Round Pond to Paxton's plume of water, the Emperor Fountain in the Canal.

Today the property belongs to a foundation called Chatsworth House Trust, formed in 1980 and granting a 99-year lease with the object being “a long term preservation of Chatsworth for the benefit of the public.” Today the family continues to occupy the private quarters of the house which is visited by thousands of tourists every year.

The present duke, born Peregrine Cavendish and known as Stoker or Sto to his family, is a very pleasant unassuming sort of fellow. He has that light British humor about his surroundings and the characters who created them (his ancestors), as well a reverence for the results and his patrimony.

He also seemed quite adept at lecturing (and working with a laptop and a slide show) about it all as he took us through the inception of the great estate.

The 105-acre Gardens of Chatsworth are in England’s Derbyshire countryside. Capability Brown’s magnificent grounds have served as the inspiration for many of the specially-commissioned works featured there, as well as the reputed model for Pemberley in Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” (the 2005 film of the book starring Keira Knightley was partially filmed there).

The Duke spoke about the iconography of the Gardens’ landscape features from the Elizabethan period through today, how its environment has been shaped by some of the finest landscape architects in history, and how its vistas have been complemented to great effect by Modern and Contemporary works.

View over the River Derwent to the west at the Capability Brown vistas from the duchess' bedroom. The design in golden box is the architectural plan of the basement of Chiswick House (once a property of the Devonshires). The pond is the dome, the circles are stairs and the little squares are pillars.

To the American ear, the business of a family maintaining a house, a property for ten generations with each succeeding generation in some way defining itself by the property is fascinatingly foreign. The present duke could easily pass for an English banker or barrister to the American eye. His lecture articulated, however, a man who is a student of his own history and is very professional in presenting, indeed marketing it as if it were a brand. What was especially interesting was the man’s nature sense of preservation, and in some way constructively contributing to the legacy.

There must have been about a hundred who came for the lecture followed by a reception with cocktails and hors d’oeuvres.

Photos courtesy of Simon Upton from Chatsworth; The House by Debo, the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire.

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