The Magnificent Chatsworth Suite Built For King William III | Real Royalty

[Music] when britain's stately homes fell on hard times in the 20th century their bewildered owners tried everything to keep their inheritance from safari parks to zoos and hotels today a visit to a country house is part of our daily life but the idea is relatively new except at chatsworth where visitors have been made welcome since the house was completed in the 18th century [Music] for chatsworth we have to thank bess of hardwick this remarkable woman had four husbands and it was with her second sir william cavendish that she built a house in a valley in her native derbyshire it was remote from london where sir william was one of henry viii's trusted advisors but bess made its construction and that of hardwick hall nearby a life's work after her death in 1608 bessie's creation went to sleep for nearly 80 years but in 1686 her successor the first duke of devonshire decided to make some alterations his plan was to remodel just the south front and keep the rest of the house as it was but the first duke got bitten by the building bug although he only intended to remodel the south facade he couldn't resist taking down the east then the west and finally the north facade in fact he got a bit carried away [Music] while the house was being altered to what we see today he took on george london and henry wise to design a huge formal garden and a frenchman called griez to build a water cascade the first duke died in 1707 but he lived just long enough to see his creation completed [Music] the cavendish family first earls then dukes of devonshire lost and remade a fortune in the 16th century supported charles the first in the english civil war during which they narrowly avoided losing chatsworth to parliament helped bring william iii and queen mary to the throne and entered politics one of them was briefly prime minister [Music] but they all had the same idea about their country seat that it should be part of the community and open to all [Music] in the 18th century the duke and duchess of devonshire spent most of their time in london but they left instructions with the housekeeper at chatsworth to show people round if they called [Music] and that idea that chatsworth belongs somehow not only to the family which built it but also to the nation has lasted for 300 years [Music] chatsworth is a mix of art and architecture and styles applied over three centuries the first duke altered the outside of his house but kept much that was inside including this fabulous ceiling in the painted hall which is the work of louis laguerre [Music] successive dukes left their mark the marble floor belongs to the fifth duke the stairs to the ninth and this charming and sad inscription to the sixth who never got over the death at the age of 29 of his beloved niece blanche william spencer duke of devonshire inherited this most beautiful house from his father in the year 1811 which had been begun in the year of english liberty 1688. and completed in the year of his sorrow 1840. [Music] the painted hall is really the heart of chatsworth successive dukes may have tinkered with it but laguerre's ceiling is exactly as it was when the house opened everyone passes through here family staff and visitors and every christmas since 1890 this has been the setting for a party thrown for the children of the estate by the duke and duchess of devonshire in this house tradition is important the heart of chatsworth is pure theatre like the rest of england's nobility the first duke wished for one thing above all else a visit from the king and queen here was the stage on which that visit would be played out the painted hall and the stairs beyond were the route to the first floor where the devonshires created a whole suite of state apartments so that the business of the court could be conducted while the monarch was here though the family owned many houses it was chatsworth which they remodeled to make it a palace fit for a king the painted ceiling and the great staircase were built on a ducal scale this was the devonshire's principal residence but it wasn't their only one they had hardwick hall also in dervisher bolton abbey and lunsbury hall in yorkshire lismore castle in ireland compton place in eastbourne and three london residences chiswick and devonshire house and burlington house both in piccadilly there's a lovely story told by deborah the dowager duchess of devonshire of a conversation she had with her grandmother-in-law the older duchess was talking about the family's social calendar november to january here at chatsworth lismore castle from february to april london in may june and july bolton abbey in august and september for grouse shooting hardwick for partridges in october but what about chizik said deborah chizik oh we sometimes used it for breakfast [Music] the duke chose baroque for the decoration of the state apartments what else it was the fashion all the rage imported from continental europe there'd been a long gallery in this part of the elizabethan house now the first duke hoped that it would be the king william iii and his court which paraded in the unfilled of rooms he'd arranged [Music] he employed the painters louis laguerre and antonio verio to decorate the ceilings and samuel watson for the carving [Music] and he filled these rooms with tapestries woven at mort lake and cabinets by the frenchman andre charles bull [Music] there would be a great chamber a state drawing room music room bedroom and closet [Music] each room more intimate and richly decorated than the last by the time it was complete the duke must have been convinced that he would be favored by a royal [Music] visit all this done for the king but the king never came 150 years later the sixth duke was solely tempted to do away with this series of rooms which occupied the prime position at chatsworth he called them a dismal ponderous range of hampton court-like chambers thank goodness he didn't otherwise we'd be denied the opportunity to see this riot of baroque decoration all the exquisite craftsmanship that went into a vain attempt to please the king [Music] so [Music] it was the sixth duke who perhaps did most to change chatsworth he had plenty of time in which to do it he was a bachelor he inherited this vast house at the age of 21 and he devoted his life to it and he employed the architects of jeffrey whiteville to build the north wing [Music] for nearly 50 years the bachelor duke worked on his many houses at chatsworth his new wing included a sculpture gallery to house works including many by konova which he collected in italy it was the perfect space in which to interest guests before they went into dinner in the new great dining room of which he was especially proud when it was completed in 1832 the sixth duke thought it was perfect it was like dining in a great trunk he said you expect the lid to open this is one of three dining rooms in chatsworth but certainly the grandest and the one with the most history the first dinner given here was attended by the duchess of kent with her daughter princess victoria at 13 it was the first time she dined with adults the duke knew how important that visit was he staged a dress rehearsal of the whole meal the day before you could spend an hour in this room and still not take it all in the four side tables were made for the room the marble fireplaces were carved by richard westmacott the younger and robert sivier the sixth duke commissioned new silver the portraits either side of the door are by van dyke but the wall lights are new they were put up in 1959 the 11th duke discovered them in the stables they'd come from devonshire house in london and lane in packing cases for 40 years outside the duke took on the young joseph paxton as head gardener the man who would later build crystal palace for the 1851 great exhibition the fourth duke had already radically changed the setting of chatsworth by employing capability brown to create the type of parkland for which he would become so famous paxton gave his duke the emperor fountain a wonderful piece of engineering fed entirely by gravity from reservoirs built on the moor above the house it was then and has remained the symbol of chatsworth but these alterations taxed even the wealthiest families though he kept chatsworth the sixth duke was forced to sell londsborough and most of the town of wetherby in yorkshire to pay for the changes everyone brought something to chatsworth in the case of the bachelor duke's father the fifth duke it was a menage a trois involving his wife the duchess jorgena and her very good friend lady elizabeth foster elizabeth became the duke's mistress and had two children by him though this didn't seem to affect his relationship with georgina when she died elizabeth married the duke to become the next duchess it's one of the oddest stories of chatsworth as told by its head of art and historic collections matthew hurst all of the objects here recall georgina her taste things that she commissioned and owned and including this portrait by thomas gainsborough which shows her in the height of fashion in 1785 when it was painted with these huge broad rimmed hats that she was so famous for wearing she's got a very cheeky look on her face hasn't she a foxy look on her face yes yes we will know all about it through the book and the film of course but uh that sort of encapsulates that doesn't it i think you do see her personality here and there's a another wonderful portrait in here by reynolds gainsborough's great rival which is an unfinished portrait and that has a little bit more of a sense of immediacy about it and i think is a bit more relaxed whereas this is she's obviously clearly posing for for us as the spectator well amidst all the gems in this room uh and the crystals there's this little work of art which uh is hers is that right it was hers yeah tell me about it um it's a cordle cup and uh cover on a saucer with a tray and in all there are actually nine in the collection and it was commissioned by georgina from the derby porcelain factory she was a great supporter of derby porcelain being just down the road and it's a set that she would have used it was made for cordle which was a sort of warm uh gruel if you like which would have been laced with ale and was given to women who were unwell or perhaps even in childbirth so so you'd think she might have drunk from this cuff absolutely yes without a doubt and to kill the pain probably probably and it would have been filled to the top i presume it must have been with two handles and you would take it exactly and the cover is there to um to keep it all warm um for you so that it doesn't go cold so here we have one of the cups this is georgina's cup and you can see her initials here with the coronet here in blue the ducal coronet and then gd for georgina devonshire and within this you've also got this wonderful gilded decoration which shows all these sort of monsters and snakes and beasts so at first glance it looks just like a sort of gold pattern but actually you've got these sort of little mythological creatures that live in amongst it and this is quite interesting because in the set we had one saucer with the initials edie on it and about two years ago we were approached by the derby factory because they had received a letter from somebody in america who had a cup of exactly the same design as these with the initials e.d and it transpired through research that was done that the ed cup actually belonged to elizabeth devonshire who was originally elizabeth foster part of the great menage a trois with the fifth duke andrew jaina and in 1806 when georgina died um elizabeth foster married the fifth duke and became duchess herself and we think that she must have commissioned replacement cups for ones that have been broken and so that's a polite way of pushing it well perhaps i mean from a woman's perspective it's like what was good for jojana is good enough for me so i want my own but i want it exactly the same it could have been that it could have been that um and it's exactly the same exactly the same same initials but obviously an e instead of a g and about sort of 15 20 years later than george aina's so i think it's quite a conscious effort as you say to sort of have the same because it's in the same design it's the same style which perhaps would have been a little bit out of date by 1806 1807. and you've only got one cup and one saucer exactly so out there somewhere i love others perhaps who knows ring matthew yes [Music] in every age the devinches of chatsworth had a role to play in the life not only of derbyshire where bess of hardwick had settled in the 17th century but also in the life of the nation but it was a struggle when the sixth duke died still a bachelor the title was inherited by the grandson of his uncle the seventh duke lived quietly to make up for the extravagances perhaps of the previous 50 years and mourned the tragic loss of his young wife to whom that inscription over the fireplace in the painted hall is dedicated [Music] in the 20th century though the family continued to live in the grand manner death duties nearly did for chatsleth the ninth duke had to sell books and paintings to settle a bill of half a million pounds a huge sum in 1912. the tenth duke succeeded in 1938 and planned to improve chatsworth but before he could do so war broke out the house was given over to the girls and staff of penrose college in wales and the devonshires went to war [Music] the tenth duke's eldest son and heir william billy hartington they called him married kathleen kennedy sister of the man who would later become the 35th president of the united states four months later billy was killed in action in belgium serving with the cold stream guards which is how chatsworth came to be inherited by the duke's second son andrew cavendish [Music] together with his wife deborah youngest of the midfoot sisters they transformed chatsworth and reopened it to the public and now it's the turn of their son peregrine and his wife amanda it's how many years since you've been in charge well my father died in may 2004 and then we came here on the 1st january 2006. and so sort of then roughly and you had a plan you knew what you wanted to do right from the very outset no we didn't really have a plan from the outset we knew that we needed to do services because my parents had done it 50 years ago so the heating and the electrics and all those things were worn out they've been good but they'd lasted 50 years so we needed to do that and we thought once we're going to do that and make a mess we might as well make improvements to the visitor route but vision you have it is like a whirlwind you're being quite bashful about it but we're standing here on the oak staircase surrounded by something that you did just like that you reveal this wonderful space up here you you did all of this and this is just a tiny part of what you're doing at chatsworth we were very lucky we got peter inscript to be the architect and he did a lot of uh research and one of the things we said was to make the house more intelligible for us and for our visitors was to put it back more or less as it was when it was built in different parts so this is a victorian part and my great grandmother dutch this evening had changed it a lot and it wasn't that we didn't like her intervention but we wanted to go back to the original wyattville but also apart from this it you introduced modernity into chatsworth which i think a lot of people were quite shocked by the fact that you brought in modern sculptures modern paintings that you have a particular view about this house which is in a way unusual is it not well i think we're very lucky because we don't have sort of committed to go through anything like that and um so if we both like something or even if one of us likes something very much uh we can try that and put it my parents put modern contemporary sculpture whatever in 1991 with a frank warhorse so that was the first and we followed that and we've perhaps done a bit more of it than they did um but it's really just it's using the house as a backdrop for one's own taste uh which we're very lucky to be able to do um and it's great fun if you live in a house and i live in a house and i would hate to have visitors walking around walking through walking in and out but you don't as you say you don't seem to mind any of that and chatsworth is absolutely packed with people isn't it at weekends and holidays they love coming here i think that it's very popular it always has been my parents made it popular uh and the people who work here make it popular because they're very welcoming it's the one thing that we really really think we do as well if not better than anybody else it's crucial to welcome people as visitors and never ever as the public and that's what we do from top to bottom and it works i think and it's always been the same way hasn't it in the 18th century chatsworth were always welcomed visitors if the duke and duchess were away in london for example they gave instructions to the housekeeper to make sure if any visitor call that they were made well i think it's important to remember this house was built to show off the first duke rebuilt the elizabethan house to make it absolutely clear to all who passed by which were very few people in those days that he was an important and very successful man he put in big gold letters his name on the front of the house just in the same way as donald trump does and for the same reason he wanted people to know that he lived here he'd made it and he could afford to build a virtual palace and so there's no point building a show off house if you then say it's private keep out you have to you know and now it's about it used to be about the people who lived here now it's about the house but the responsibilities of looking after a house like this with all these treasures in them is it's pretty darn is it not daunting it must be daunting well it's not daunting because we have a great team and without them it would be very daunting but we have brilliant people here uh some have been here a long time some people have been less long and between them all and with us um sort of getting in the way and interviewing it it works okay there's always things we can do better but it it's certainly not daunting it's really exciting [Music] do you have a favorite duke well i mean obviously my father because i knew him i didn't know any i knew my grandfather a little bit but um i knew my father very well so that it's good that he's there with his with his ancestors but the the two figures in the middle well here is lord burlington and his family who um were in a way nothing to do with us except the younger daughter the little one was looking at the music uh she married the person who became uh the fourth duke when there was a painting of him in the corner much older she died when she was very young but she was the only surviving child of of burlington and therefore she inherited all his collection and burlington house in london and chidik and there's more castle in ireland and so uh he is enormously influential on the collection here because his pictures and bronzes and furniture uh he was a a patron of kent and uh so there's a lot of his stuff here all of it the absolute top quality and then above him is the first duke who um the the um the man who painted his name and gold on the on the front of the house quite rightly and that picture of him on a horse is um not a sort of a shrinking violet image at all um and i love that i love that self-confidence and it was a self-confident time and he was he was made duke in 1694 for getting william and mary to come to be a king i mean i'm not by himself but with a few others and i i think it's it it says a lot about him about how he felt about himself about how he felt about the house and i love that self-confidence as a child i expect you must have looked at that picture and thought hey that's the kind of man i might like to be well i didn't think i did really i don't think that you know i don't think i ever until actually after my father passed away i don't think i ever felt that i was going to be doing so it wasn't the sort of thing that you took i took for granted or anticipated at all um pretty illogical but that's how it was [Music] in the spirit of those who've gone before the duke of davenger is spending 14 million pounds renovating cleaning and opening up chatsworth to better reveal its treasures among them his favorites and this is one of your special treasures isn't it this is a beautiful thing it was made i think in about 1650 for the savile family this the owl at the top is the emblem of the savile family dorothy savile married the third earl of bellington the architect of titic house and this was perhaps made for her grandfather uh and passed down to her and then their only surviving daughter charlotte married the man who became the fourth duke of devonshire and so chatsworth inherited this and many other beautiful objects and it's something which we have out often uh sometimes on the visitor route sometimes in our part of the house and it's something which i think the workmanship is really astonishing and you get a modern silversmith somebody like hiroshi suzuki to look at this and they are amazed by the skill um and would be delighted if they could make anything as beautiful as them it is auricular it is something this word auricular meaning ear meaning the shape of the ear is that what it's all about the shape of that i think it's that is sort of shorthand for the style um it was made by huguenot craftsman who came to england in the 17th century for religious persecution reasons and they were immensely skilled and this is one of the products of that skill and we're very lucky to have it it flows doesn't it look at the lines if you look all the way it's almost here it's almost liquid you could almost feel that it could melt away and yet it's solid as anything did your father give you any advice any help before you took over um chatsworth no not overtly not not as such but he he made it absolutely clear first of all how incredibly lucky he we were and that's right from the very beginning it was always there he was always talking about that and that's quite an important pretty obvious thing but it's it was good that he he kept it in the forefront and also he was he loved derbyshire and he spent a lot of time going to various local things all his life um often two or three things a day of a sort of civic nature of a charitable nature and so that was an example which i wouldn't come up to that standard but he he he made it clear that there was uh that no blessing believes which is important i think would he have approved of you having so much energy now in chatsworth coming in and and changing things and changing it to you know your artistic taste yes definitely he he was um he collected very well he collected the most the thing he's probably best known for is that he collected a lot of loose and fried paintings he commissioned uh lucien to paint a lot of members of our family but he also collected some wonderful modern british things and he added a lot to the collection of illustrated flower books uh and he also added significantly to georgena duchess's collection of minerals so he collects on a fairly wide front and he was very proud of that and and he about those things he knew a lot about i think he would have been very enthusiastic he was he loved chats with being um popular he loved it that people liked coming and naturally it would be odd not to i mean there is a um attention always between the curatorial influence which is to keep everything as it is and not change it um and prevent it being damaged and the fact that there's hundreds of thousands of people here doing their best to trample about and not overtly damage works of art but to change things because if you walk so light's not good for stuff but without it you can't see it [Music] well so what do you think about being known as a custodian of our nation's heritage is this something that you give any real thought to or is it something that is just uh you know part of your nature you feel yeah i think that you have to take quite seriously i mean chatsworth is very very very important to me and um we want to try and get it right so we need to have good historical knowledge of what happened before before we change things we may then change them but we need to know why what it was before we change it i think that's really important otherwise blunder about a bit um and i'm also blundering about but in a sort of knowledgeable way and we have um brilliant people who help us with that and i think that being i'm awful change but if it's something like putting sculpture in the garden or redecorating room that's fine because it can always be put back but to make physical significant physical change we've got to be very careful and we have the planning process which is wonderful and i think puts this country ahead of practically anywhere else in the world that i'm aware of um without the planning process in this country we would be living in a much less attractive place and i think it's worth remembering that because they don't always get the benefit of the work that they do so i think that the customership is crucial [Music] if it were me living here as you're living here to get up in the morning to see so many people walking around your house i mean it's not as though you're cut off from the house you have a wing but it all interlinks you use this corridor to get to there and you go through public areas and you meet people and that's lovely it is lovely but also they're always there you never get away from them no i don't feel it like that at all um the house doesn't open until half of 10 11 o'clock and it closes again sort of at the late afternoon so then in the evenings and in the mornings there's nobody much there and also without people without people populating it particularly it would be it would be i think very lonely and grim and of course financially it would be impossible um so all those things together um it's not just because of the money that the visitors provide although that's important but the very fact that chatsworth and derbyshire are being enjoyed by so many people from all over the world is a huge source of pride [Music] uh [Music] so chatsworth endures the present duke is a collector in the mould of his ancestors sculpture and modern art are his passions a new piece seems to arrive on the back of a lorry almost every week and all around him are the ghosts of this great house the first duke's architecture the fourth duke's park the extravagant sixth duke's dining room and his own father and mother's heroic role in restoring this important piece of the nation's heritage this is the story of chatsworth what else can there be to discover this is one of the hidden treasures of chatsworth a private theatre rarely seen by the public a wonderful reminder of how the present duke's ancestors were so anxious to entertain their guests it's absolutely magical just look at this it's incredible imagine here is the evidence of the hand of one william helmsley who styled himself a leading london designer and supplier of theatrical scenery and appliances they survive and they're very rare indeed this was originally a ballroom built by the bachelor duke in the 18th century but turned into a theater by the 8th duke in the 1890s the prince of wales came here he came here so often that it was dubbed the theatre royal but just look at it the original proscenium arch the gas lights the pulleys the curtains everything as it was 120 years ago [Music] so chatsworth has everything you cannot say you've seen england's stately homes if you've not been here [Music] i think what appeals to me about chatsworth is that it feels just right it's made of local stone it nestles into a wooded valley which looks as though it's been made to receive it it feels as though it's been here forever that didn't happen by accident the devonshires have worked at it over the years along the way they've improved and extended this great house loved it and cherished it and filled it with treasures [Music] the people of derbyshire who walk in this park and have done for 300 years believe chatsworth belongs to them but in fact it belongs to the nation it may be privately owned but thanks to the duke of devonshire everyone can enjoy one of the treasure houses of britain [Music] next time on treasure houses of britain what they did for the man who won the battle of blenheim there's the first duke riding a great charger and he's receiving the surrender of martial tellride who's lifting his hat to him a house fit for a national hero this is a a incredible room this long library it's a 183 feet long and memories of winston churchill for whose ancestors blenheim palace was built 300 years ago inside the watch there's an inscription it says to blanford from winston spencer churchill christmas 1937. you

Channel: Real Royalty

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Length: 43min 29sec (2609 seconds)

Published: Tue May 18 2021