Chatsworth, Part Three: The House

With the rain falling out of doors, we retreated to the interior of the house. Of course it is jam-packed with art of every conceivable form (except quilts - not one!). Every room is a knock-out.

Here is the entry hall.  Even blurry it's stunning.

Look up.

Doesn't it seem like the royal treatment?

The view from the top of the stairs.

Doncha love the detail?  And who dusts this stuff?

Here are some of my favorite rooms:

Doesn't this room seem so bright and cheerful?  Actually, it is lit up by the flash on my husband's camera.  It was very dark and dreary with the naked eye.  Of course, there's no windows.

The pink dining room.  This one got me.  I actually had my jaw drop, and my mouth hung open.  I'm sure I looked quite the idiot.

But how could I not be in awe?  A PINK dining room!

And don't overlook all the gold, too.  It was just beautiful.

Here's some of the stuff in the various rooms:

Just a little flower arrangement.

More stuff to dust.

This tureen was in the pink dining room.  I could just live in that room alone.

They did  have the huge sculpture room with all those sculptures you can see in the movie (Pride and Prejudice), and here is the one that was commissioned for the movie, of Matthew MacFayden, who plays Mr. Darcy.

And this is the Duchess of Devonshire, whose life features in the new movie coming out, The Duchess, starring Keira Knightley.  How 'bout that hair, huh?

I guess we all know who that is, riding on His red thingy with all His friends.  Look up at the ceiling, Adam.  There's some wonderful paintings up there, too!

Which leads us to the chapel.

Which leads me to a funny story.

We had been making a tour of the house, self-guided, when we came across a tour guide and his group.  We couldn't pass them easily, so we stayed and listened a little to his spiel.  It was interesting, but my daughter and I finally slipped past the group just as they were entering the chapel.  

There's a smallish library and some rooms with contemporary art beyond the chapel, and then one is back in the entry hall again, ready to start on the second part of the house.  

My husband, meanwhile, was still stuck with the tour group, which kept getting in his photos.  My daughter and I spied some out-of-the-way chairs in a hallway off the entry hall, and since we'd been on our feet for nearly 6 hours, we decided to sit and wait for the DH to show up. 

 

We were right next to a door with an alarm on it, probably leading to the private apartments, and people were to-ing and fro-ing through this door repeated.  One of the people to pass by us  was an elderly chap who decided to stop and chat us up a bit.  I was tired and found myself in the embarrassing situation of hearing an English accent spoken to me and trying not to respond with the same inflection.  But we had a nice chat, and he turned to go. 

 

At that moment a thought occurred to me: that nice man isn't dressed like the rest of the house docents.  They're wearing navy blazers, his was tweed.  I was just beginning to think, "Oh no..." when one of the docents came up to us and asked, "Do you know who that was?"

Now my stomach flipped over, but I said, "No."

"That was the Duke."

Peregrine Cavendish, the twelfth Duke of Devonshire. 

Duh.

It's a good thing we didn't know who he was, or I would've been really tongue tied and stupid.

Eventually my husband caught up with us and complained about all the tourists getting into his pictures. My daughter and I just sat there and nodded until he finished, and we could say, "Guess what we did."

We finished the house tour and the rain had stopped, so we went back outside!

Chatsworth, Part Two

After we gave up on the maze, we headed over to the rose garden.



We passed the Cascade. There are signs on the sides advising caution if you enter the water, as if people do it all the time!

"Welcome to my humble abode."

The roses smelled so strong and sweet! And there were tiny strawberries planted in all the beds. This put me and my daughter in mind of it being lunch time, so we headed towards the nearest snack bar. We sampled Britain's famous "pasties" - she had ricotta and spinach, I had bacon and egg. They were delicious and also very attractive.

Duck attractive, that is.

I got my fingers bit more than once, but I couldn't resist giving her more. She jumped like a puppy, as soon as she saw I had food in my fingers. Too funny.

Fully bolstered from our delicious meal, and since the weather was still holding out, we decided to go and check out the Farmyard and Adventure Playground!


...where we saw:

Guinea pigs!

And a very nice mare who asked me to scratch her face for her.  I complied.

And sheep that we could pet!

And look at that face!

Here's a face only a mother could love.

There were several goats.

And chickens!  I love chickens!

This one has a funny head.

Squeal with me.

They had a time for interacting with some of the animals, namely the guinea pigs and the goats.  We had to wait almost an hour for this to happen, and my husband had to get out due to his asthma, but my daughter and I waited so she could handle a guinea pig.  They are such docile creatures.  This one just nearly fell asleep.
And the little goats just wanted to climb anything and everything.  This poor guy was just crouching to take a picture of his daughter playing with one of the goats when the other one got on his back.
It was after this that it finally decided to rain. So we made our way indoors for more thrills of a different kind.

My Favorite Day

Thursday, July 10, 2008

A day I keep revisiting. Let me just pause in the moment. Aaaaah.

On Wednesday night, we finally arrived at our destination: High View Cottage in Uttoxeter, Derbyshire, UK. This bed and breakfast was as new and shiny at the previous one was old and full of character.

And they were doing construction on at as we stayed there. It was so unworthy of being photographed; I think this is the only picture in the whole bunch. Never mind. We spent a comfortable night there, got up the next morning and ate a hearty English breakfast (eggs, bacon, sausages, potatoes, tomatoes, mushrooms and beans) and headed off to Chatsworth House.


As you approach the House, you have to drive through part of the 1800 acres or so, and there are sheep everywhere. They get on the road some, but mostly they stay in the grass.



This is not the first view of the house. But I just wanted to give you and idea of the scale and the grandeur. On the far right is where one enters the house, and in the middle is an open courtyard. The actual house in the part on the left.

But the house was closed when we arrived - it didn't open for another half hour. And since the weather wasn't wet (yet), we decided to walk around on the grounds for a while and take in the sights.








And what wonderful sights! Aside from the beauty of the gardens and the buildings, we had such wonderful contact with the wild and domesticated animals here, as you will see. To me, it felt kind of like an eden.




Not only do they have sheep, but they have a herd of deer on the grounds. These were not very friendly, we couldn't even get close.




But the ducklings were very interested in the potato chips we were carrying. So cute.




We wandered the grounds for a while, and then came upon the maze, which we spent an hour in, I think. We didn't find the center on our first attempt - it was a good maze! But I heard some very loud chirping coming from the hedge at one point, and I stopped our mini parade to check it out.




There they were, perfectly at ear level, baby birds!




Feedmefeedmefeedme!

Well, I think I'd better stop here for now before I crash this blog. I will pick it up from the maze tomorrow...

Blenheim Palace

Well, you can see the weather remained consistent after Oxford. It was quite gloomy when we arrived at the Palace, and it was terribly expensive to get in! Something like 48 pounds for the whole family. Ouch! This was particularly disturbing since we knew we didn't have much time to investigate as we had a reservation at our next b&b - and we were miles and miles away.

But, we persevered and trudged through the house, where none of us bothered to take pictures.
Was this because they don't allow it? Doubtful. Was it because there was nothing worthy of photographing? Not at all. I'm not sure why we didn't take any pictures. In too much a hurry, perhaps. In any case, I know I felt saturated with elegance and wealth and history by the time we left an hour later.