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Hardwick Hall
Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire is an architecturally significant country house from the Elizabethan era, a leading example of the Elizabethan prodigy house. Built between 1590 and 1597 for Bess of Hardwick, it was designed by the architect Robert Smythson, an exponent of the Renaissance style. Hardwick Hall is one of the earliest examples of the English interpretation of this style, which came into fashion having slowly spread from Florence. Its arrival in Britain coincided with the period when it was no longer necessary or legal to fortify a domestic dwelling. After ownership for centuries by the Cavendish family and the line of the Earl of Devonshire and the Duke of Devonshire, ownership of the house was transferred to the Treasury in 1956 and then to the National Trust in 1959. The building was ruinous and required stabilisation and a subsequent restoration. The Hall is fully open to the public and received 298,283 visitors in 2019. History 16th century Sited on a hil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prodigy House
Prodigy houses are large and showy English country houses built by courtiers and other wealthy families, either "noble palaces of an awesome scale" or "proud, ambitious heaps" according to taste. The prodigy houses stretch over the periods of Tudor, Elizabethan, and Jacobean architecture, though the term may be restricted to a core period of roughly 1570 to 1620. Many of the grandest were built with a view to housing Elizabeth I and her large retinue as they made their annual royal progress around her realm. Many are therefore close to major roads, often in the English Midlands. The term originates with the architectural historian Sir John Summerson, and has been generally adopted. He called them "...the most daring of all English buildings." The houses fall within the broad style of Renaissance architecture, but represent a distinctive English take on the style, mainly reliant on books for their knowledge of developments on the Continent. Andrea Palladio (1508–158 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chesterfield, Derbyshire
Chesterfield is a market town and unparished area in the Borough of Chesterfield, Derbyshire, England, north of Derby and south of Sheffield at the confluence of the River Rother and River Hipper. In 2011 the built-up-area subdivision had a population of 88,483, making it the second-largest settlement in Derbyshire, after Derby. The wider borough had a population of 103,801 in 2011. In 2011, the town had a population of 76,753. It has been traced to a transitory Roman fort of the 1st century CE. The name of the later Anglo-Saxon village comes from the Old English ''ceaster'' (Roman fort) and ''feld'' (pasture). It has a sizeable street market three days a week. The town sits on an old coalfield, but little visual evidence of mining remains. The main landmark is the crooked spire of the Church of St Mary and All Saints. History Chesterfield was in the Hundred of Scarsdale. The town received its market charter in 1204 from King John, which constituted the town as a f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Cavendish, 1st Duke Of Devonshire
William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Devonshire, (25 January 164018 August 1707) was an English soldier, nobleman, and Whig politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1661 to 1684 when he inherited his father's peerage as Earl of Devonshire. He was part of the "Immortal Seven" group that invited William III, Prince of Orange to depose James II of England as monarch during the Glorious Revolution, and was rewarded with the elevation to Duke of Devonshire in 1694. Life Cavendish was the son of William Cavendish, 3rd Earl of Devonshire, and his wife Lady Elizabeth Cecil. After completing his education he made the customary tour of Europe, and then in 1661, he was elected Member of Parliament for Derbyshire in the Cavalier Parliament. He was a Whig under Charles II of England and James II of England and was leader of the anti-court and anti-Catholic party in the House of Commons, where he served as Lord Cavendish. In 1678 he was one of the committee appointed to draw up art ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Cavendish, 1st Earl Of Devonshire
William Cavendish, 1st Earl of Devonshire (27 December 1552 – 3 March 1626) was an English nobleman, politician, and courtier. Early life William Cavendish was the second son of Sir William Cavendish and Bess of Hardwick. He was educated with the children of George Talbot, 6th Earl of Shrewsbury, whom his mother married after his father's death. She made him a rich allowance in his youth. He then entered Clare College, Cambridge. Career He was M.P. for Liverpool in 1586 and Newport (Cornwall) in 1588. He was appointed High Sheriff of Derbyshire, where the estates of his family lay, for 1595 and justice of the peace in 1603. He was created Baron Cavendish of Hardwick in 1605, thanks to the representations of his niece, Arbella Stuart. He participated in the colonisation of the Bermudas, and Devonshire Parish was called after him; he also was a supporter of colonising Virginia. His mother's death in 1608, and his elder brother Henry's death in 1616, gave him a vast ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gilbert Talbot, 7th Earl Of Shrewsbury
Gilbert Talbot, 7th Earl of Shrewsbury, 7th Earl of Waterford, 13th Baron Talbot, KG (20 November 1552 – 8 May 1616), styled Lord Talbot from 1582 to 1590, was a peer in the peerage of England. He also held the subsidiary titles of 16th Baron Strange of Blackmere and 12th Baron Furnivall. Life He was the eldest surviving son of George Talbot, 6th Earl of Shrewsbury, by the latter's first marriage to Gertrude Manners, daughter of the first Earl of Rutland. He was born on 20th November 1553. On February 6, 1568, Gilbert was married to Mary Cavendish, daughter of his new stepmother, Bess of Hardwick; Mary had inherited much of her formidable mother's strength of character. When Bess and her husband fell out, Gilbert took the side of his wife and his mother-in-law against his own father. However, when the old earl died in 1590, Gilbert refused Bess the widow's portion that was her due, and consequently, they fell out. He appears to have been a highly quarrelsome individual, f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hatfield House
Hatfield House is a country house set in a large park, the Great Park, on the eastern side of the town of Hatfield, Hertfordshire, England. The present Jacobean house, a leading example of the prodigy house, was built in 1611 by Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury and Chief Minister to King James I. It is a prime example of Jacobean architecture. The estate includes extensive grounds and surviving parts of an earlier palace. The house is currently the home of Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 7th Marquess of Salisbury. It is open to the public. History An earlier building on the site was the Royal Palace of Hatfield. Only part of this still exists a short distance from the present house. That palace was the childhood home and favourite residence of Queen Elizabeth I. Built in 1497 by the Archbishop of Canterbury (formerly Bishop of Ely), King Henry VII's minister, John Cardinal Morton, it comprised four wings in a square surrounding a central courtyard. The palace was seized ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sir Robert Cecil
Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, (1 June 156324 May 1612), was an English statesman noted for his direction of the government during the Union of the Crowns, as Tudor England gave way to Stuart rule (1603). Lord Salisbury served as the Secretary of State of England (1596–1612) and Lord High Treasurer (1608–1612), succeeding his father as Queen Elizabeth I's Lord Privy Seal and remaining in power during the first nine years of King James I's reign until his own death. The principal discoverer of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, Robert Cecil remains a controversial historic figure as it is still debated at what point he first learned of the plot and to what extent he acted as an ''agent provocateur''. Early life and family Cecil (created Earl of Salisbury in 1605) was the younger son of William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley by his second wife, Mildred Cooke, eldest daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke of Gidea, Essex. His elder half-brother was Thomas Cecil, 1st Earl of Exete ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frieze
In architecture, the frieze is the wide central section part of an entablature and may be plain in the Ionic or Doric order, or decorated with bas-reliefs. Paterae are also usually used to decorate friezes. Even when neither columns nor pilasters are expressed, on an astylar wall it lies upon the architrave ("main beam") and is capped by the moldings of the cornice. A frieze can be found on many Greek and Roman buildings, the Parthenon Frieze being the most famous, and perhaps the most elaborate. This style is typical for the Persians. In interiors, the frieze of a room is the section of wall above the picture rail and under the crown moldings or cornice. By extension, a frieze is a long stretch of painted, sculpted or even calligraphic decoration in such a position, normally above eye-level. Frieze decorations may depict scenes in a sequence of discrete panels. The material of which the frieze is made of may be plasterwork, carved wood or other decorative me ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Long Gallery
In architecture, a long gallery is a long, narrow room, often with a high ceiling. In Britain, long galleries were popular in Elizabethan and Jacobean houses. They were normally placed on the highest reception floor of English country houses, usually running along a side of the house, with windows on one side and at the ends giving views, and doors to other rooms on the other. They served several purposes: they were used for entertaining guests, for taking exercise in the form of walking when the weather was inclement, for displaying art collections, especially portraits of the family and royalty, and acting as a corridor. A long gallery has the appearance of a spacious corridor, but it was designed as a room to be used in its own right, not just as a means of passing from one room to another, though many served as this too. In the 16th century, the seemingly obvious concept of the corridor had not been introduced to British domestic architecture; rooms were entered from ou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
State Room
A state room in a large European mansion is usually one of a suite of very grand rooms which were designed for use when entertaining royalty. The term was most widely used in the 17th and 18th centuries. They were the most lavishly decorated in the house and contained the finest works of art. State rooms were usually only found in the houses of the upper echelons of the aristocracy, those who were likely to entertain a head of state. They were generally to accommodate and entertain distinguished guests, especially a monarch and/or a royal consort, or other high-ranking aristocrats and state officials, hence the name. In their original form a set of state rooms made up a state apartment, which always included a bedroom. British Isles In Great Britain and Ireland in particular, state rooms in country houses were used occasionally, and only rarely all round the year. The occupier of the house and his family actually lived in other apartments in the house. And unlike the main rec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Great Hall
A great hall is the main room of a royal palace, castle or a large manor house or hall house in the Middle Ages, and continued to be built in the country houses of the 16th and early 17th centuries, although by then the family used the great chamber for eating and relaxing. At that time the word "great" simply meant big and had not acquired its modern connotations of excellence. In the medieval period, the room would simply have been referred to as the "hall" unless the building also had a secondary hall, but the term "great hall" has been predominant for surviving rooms of this type for several centuries, to distinguish them from the different type of hall found in post-medieval houses. Great halls were found especially in France, England and Scotland, but similar rooms were also found in some other European countries. A typical great hall was a rectangular room between one and a half and three times as long as it was wide, and also higher than it was wide. It was enter ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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