The day after our adventures at Royal Ascot, the four gals decided to stop off at Chatsworth House to break up our multi-hour drive home. Chatsworth House is an incredibly large country estate owned by the Cavendish family, who are the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire.
You may recognize Chatsworth House from the picture below, as it was immortalized as Pemberly in the BBC production of "Pride and Prejudice" starting a young Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy. It was more recently used in the BBC production "Death Comes to Pemberly", a story (I think) about Elizabeth Bennet's (now Mrs. Darcy) n'er-do-well brother-in-law who is suspected of murder most foul. But I digress....
 |
| Chatsworth House, AKA Pemberly |
It was a beautiful day, so we took a short walk around the garden before heading indoors for a tour of the state rooms. Like many of the historic manor houses throughout England, tours of Chatsworth House are conducted through a portion of the house, while a majority of the house remains as private use for the family.
 |
| Grand hall |
The grand hall was pretty darned amazing. In most of these historic houses, the grand entrance was a show of wealth, opulence, and style. I just loved Chatsworth House's grand staircases, intricate ceiling, and massive fireplace
 |
| Bird's eye view of grand hall |
 |
| Another bird's eye view of the grand hall |
The picture below is of one of many similar looking bedrooms we toured in the house. This particular room was special, however, as it housed the prisoner, Mary Queen of Scots, for a short time while she was in the area. Pretty swanky prison, if I do say so myself! That said, we all know how it ended for Mary, so she didn't have it that great in the end...
 |
| Prisoner Mary Queen of Scots slept here |
The picture of the library didn't turn out so great, but this room (which we couldn't enter) looked amazing. The volunteer said the family actually still used this room quite often. It looked so cozy - I could totally see myself getting lost in a book or playing Words with Friends on my iPad for hours in there!
 |
| Fancy schmancy library |
And no manor house is complete without a 20+ person dining table with solid silver candelabras!
 |
| Formal dining hall |
After touring the state rooms we went outside for a stroll in their formal gardens. I have found that England is mad-crazy for ice cream and you can purchase the stuff at nearly every historic site, event, theater, or... well, you get the idea. We each picked up a "99p Flake" which is soft serve ice cream in a cone or cup, with a flakey chocolate stick shoved into the ice cream at a jaunty angle. The strange thing is it always costs more like £2 to £3, depending on if you get a single or double, so I don't know why it's still called the 99p Flake!
 |
| Formal gardens |
We strolled around the formal gardens for about an hour, finishing up our 99p Flake and catching some rare vitamin d.
 |
| Second water feature within formal gardens |
And then we had to hit the road and head home, completing our three-day extravaganza of fun.
 |
| Up close view of water feature |
No comments:
Post a Comment