Bess of Hardwick, born into the most brutal and turbulent period of England’s history, did not have an auspicious start in life.  Widowed for the first time at sixteen, she nonetheless outlived four monarchs, married three more times, and died one of the wealthiest and most powerful women the country has ever seen.

The Tudor age was a hazardous time for an ambitious woman: by the time Frances, Bess’s first child, was six, three of her illustrious godparents had been beheaded.  Plague regularly wiped out entire families, conspiracies and feuds were rife.  But through all this Bess Hardwick bore eight children and built an empire of her own: the great houses of Chatsworth and Hardwick.

Review:

I picked this book up on my visit to Harwick Hall so that I could learn more about Bess who had built both the old and the new halls.  I was undecided which book to choose and eventually decided on this one because it seemed to contain more information than the others and it also looked as if it would be an easy style to read.  Whilst I was paying for it, the lady behind the counter assured me I had picked the best book and that she had really enjoyed it.

I found the book was well researched, very accessible and easy to read.    The book paints an excellent portrait of a woman of great character and determination.  Bess started of with very little money being the daughter of a gentleman squire but due to her marriages and diligence as a business woman she accumulated wealth and properties.  The book portrays Bess as a warm, affectionate and caring person who often gave gifts to her family.

You get a sense of what it was like to live in the Tudor age with insight into both daily domestic life and the political intrigues of the time.  Bess was a lifelong friend of Elizabeth I and you  get glimpses into life in the Royal Court.  When she was married to the Earl of Shrewsbury he was responsible for the confinement of Mary Queen of Scots who was essentially kept prisoner, initially at Tutbury.  This duty was expected to be temporary but the arrangement lasted 15 years and the book explains what it was like to be burdened with this responsibility and the difficulties it caused.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book and will re-read it in due course.

The first house at Chatsworth was built by Bess of Hardwick and her second husband William Cavendish.  Building work began in 1552 and continued for a number of years.  They built a large house which was on the site of the square block of the current building.  There is a painting that shows what the original house looked like but nothing to show what the interior would have been like.

The court of Diana, the virgin goddess and huntress, is probably a deliberate allusion to Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen.

To either side of the window recess, and rather more skilfully modelled than the rest of the frieze, are allegorical figures of Venus chastising Cupid, and Summer, based on Flemish engravings by Crispin van der Passe from designs by Martin de Vos. The hunting scenes elsewhere in the frieze are based on engravings by Philip Galle after Johannes Stradanus. *

Bess would have sat under a canopy like this although this one actually made in the early seventeenth century and pre-dates her. It was placed here by the bachelor Duke in the nineteenth century.

*From the National Trust guidebook.

The National Trust guidebook describes the hall as perhaps the most perfect of all the Elizabethan ‘prodigy houses’.

To design it, Bess chose the greatly gifted Robert Smythson, a mason by training but one of the first Englishmen to be described as ‘architect’; and she poored a lifetime of her own experience of building into the project. The exterior is relatively plain; what makes Hardwick unforgettable is it’s height and symmetry, the everchanging silhouette of its six towers, and the huge expanses of window glass that glitter magically on a sunny evening and inspired the famous rhyme, ‘Hardwick Hall, more glass than wall’.

You might not the similarity of style to Burton Agnes Hall which was also designed by Robert Smythson.

Bess of Hardwick is almost as famous for her four marriages as she is for her building activities. She was married at 15, but her young husband, Robert Barlow, died a year later. She outlived three more husbands, all Elizabethan courtiers, bore eight children and became an intimate friend of the queen. After the violent collapse of her fourth marriage to the earl of Shrewsbury, Bess retreated to her family estate at Hardwick.

As a countess, Bess needed something grander than her father’s medieval manor house, She began to build Hardwick Old Hall in its place in 1587, making use of its bold views across the open Derbyshire landscape. In 1590, Bess began building another house immediately adjacent – the New Hall – this time using a professional architect Robert Smythson. The Old and New Halls were intended to compliment each other, like tow wings of one building. *

When Bess died in 1608 she left her son, William Cavendish in charge of Hardwick. William was the founder of the Cavendish family, dukes of Devonshire based at the Chatsworth estate. Over time the dukes came to prefer Chatsworth and the Old Hall was partially dismantled in the 1750s.

*From the English Heritage Guidebook