IX.—Bess of Hardwick's Buildings and Building Accounts

Basil Stallybrass

doi:10.1017/S0261340900010778

IX.—Bess of Hardwick's Buildings and Building Accounts

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 November 2011

Basil Stallybrass

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Bess of Hardwick's building accounts are stored in the muniment room at Hardwick: in regard to Chatsworth they are fragmentary; in regard to Hardwick they are almost complete; in regard to other works they survive but in scattered references. Of the buildings themselves Chatsworth has almost entirely disappeared, the earlier building at Hardwick is partially demolished, the newer building remains almost as Bess left it; while her other minor works remain only in portions. Thus the buildings and the accounts are commentaries on each other, and fate has decreed that the measure of their survival should be equal.

Type: Research Article
Information: Archaeologia , Volume 64 , 1913 , pp. 347 - 398

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261340900010778 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1913

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^{page 348 note 1} Centre of south front (fig. 1 and pl. xxxii).

^{page 348 note 2} Seen on the right hand of pl. xxviii, fig. 1.

^{page 348 note 3} Cf. Harrison's Description of England, Bk. II, chap. 10.

^{page 351 note 1} Hunter's, Hallamshire, p. 78.Google Scholar

^{page 352 note 1} Hunter, 's Hallamshire, p. 79Google Scholar

^{page 353 note 1} The Earl had recently been building a lodge here. Lodge's Illustrations, ii. 226Google Scholar.

^{page 353 note 2} Cf. Lodge's, Illustrations, letter of October, 1569.Google Scholar

^{page 355 note 1} Lodge makes a curious blunder when he says: ‘The house which the Earl was thus embellishing mentioned under the several names of Shrewsbury House, Shrewsbury Place, and my house in Broad St., appears to have been held by the Earls of Shrewsbury under the heirs of the 1st Marquis of Winchester …’ The Broad Street house thus leased (on the site of the dissolved monastery of the Austin Friars near London Wall) was occupied by Gilbert Talbot. The Earls house at Cole Harbour, Upper Thames Street, appears to have been occupied as late as 1585 by Henry Talbot, but can hardly have been the object of this expenditure, as it was shortly afterwards converted into tenements (Stow's Survey, p. 89). The Earl had another house near Charing Cross (cf. Hunter's Hallamshire letter of Gilbert and Mary Talbot to the Earl, Feb. 13, 1578–9, signed ‘at y^r Hon⁸ lyttel house near Charing Crosse’), but it was unimportant, and the site has not been identified. Probably the work described was at Shrewsbury House, Chelsea, which Mr. Walter Godfrey has identified with 43–45 Cheyne Walk (Survey of London, vol. ii, p. 76, where there are reproductions of the view from Lysons' Environs and an old engraving, with a measured drawing.of some panelling still existing). It is described in Faulkner's Chelsea as an irregular brick building forming three sides of a quadrangle (a fourth had probably faced the river) with a gallery 120 feet long, originally wainscotted in carved oak. It was here that the Countess stayed on her visits to London.

^{page 360 note 1} Lodge's, Illustrations, Henry Talbot to the Earl of Shrewsbury, Aug. 22, 1585.Google Scholar

^{page 359 note 1} Perhaps it is one of the Countess's grandchildren who writes across the page: The truth if ye wold gladly have I say S^r Henry is a knave. Witness if ye wold have more Come when the bell rings, ye shall have store.

^{page 359 note 2} Probably nine week-days and a Sunday.

^{page 361 note 1} This idea was only seized in the New Hall.

^{page 362 note 1} Wollaton would be admirably proportioned save for the incongruous central feature, but Mr. Gotch has shown that this is contemporary. May not the central hall and the room over have been added by local talent to some design, perhaps French or Italian, of the courtyard type?

^{page 364 note 1} Ottwell Heginbotham is probably the same man who appears in the Talbot correspondence of 1579 as the spokesman of certain Ashford tenants who had been ejected by the Earl, and this would indicate that they were countenanced by his wife.

^{page 364 note 2} A rood was 7 yards long × 1 yard high × 1 yard wide [cf. note at side of Smythson drawing ‘Riding House at Welbeck’]. A modern rod is 5½ yards long × 5½ yards high × 13½ inches wide.

^{page 370 note 1} A mason whose banker mark I have discovered in many places.

^{page 370 note 2} Consoles under the window sills.

^{page 371 note 1} Roads could not write: his receipts are signed with a +.

^{page 372 note 1} Mentioned in James Hardwick's inventory, but no trace of it remains.

^{page 373 note 1} A fodder = 2,000 lb. ‘Two blocks make a pig and 8 of these a fodder’—Vernon and Hood's Beauties of England and Wales, vol. iii.

^{page 373 note 2} i. e. the main oak staircase.

^{page 373 note 3} Probably the room under the Forest Great Chamber.

^{page 373 note 4} Now disappeared or never finished.

^{page 374 note 1} Sister of the Countess.

^{page 374 note 2} The stonework has disappeared, though the plaster work above remains. See pl. xxxv, fig. 2.

^{page 374 note 3} Probably to receive oak plugs for the plasterwork, still in situ.

^{page 374 note 4} It was recently proposed to drain this room, then full of rubbish, by cutting such a tunnel. Excavation proved it was unnecessary—the tunnel was already there.

^{page 375 note 1} This is the Court Wall of the New Hall, finished by May 18.

^{page 375 note 2} Pl. xxxiv, fig. 1.

^{page 375 note 3} = hooks, or perhaps a mistake for locks.

^{page 375 note 4} Another entry shows it was removed to Shirland.

^{page 377 note 1} What can these be?

^{page 378 note 1} Pl. xxxviii, xxxix, fig. 1.

^{page 378 note 2} Pl xxxix, fig. 2, xl, xli, fig. 1.

^{page 378 note 3} Pl xli, fig. 2.

^{page 379 note 1} He was evidently sleeping in an unfinished roof turret—uncomfortable quarters even in June.

^{page 379 note 2} Fig. 4.

^{page 379 note 3} Pl. xliii.

^{page 381 note 1} Brackets.

^{page 382 note 1} Curb.

^{page 382 note 2} James was the child of William Cavendish, afterwards first Earl of Devonshire, whom his grandmother calls her ‘juyll’.

^{page 383 note 1} Pl. xliv, fig. 2.

^{page 383 note 2} Pl. xxxvii.

^{page 383 note 3} These prints were also used to decorate furniture. May we surmise that the ‘curious portraits’ which Faulkner mentions as having existed on the panelling in Shrewsbury House, Chelsea, were of this nature?

^{page 386 note 1} Dorset ‘flock’.

^{page 388 note 1} This word was originally equivalent to ‘taskmen’, but by this time it can have meant little more than tenant-labourers, as all are paid.

^{page 389 note 1} Harrison's words are a caustic comment on this: ‘The gentility commonly provide themselves sufficiently of wheat for their own tables whilst their household and poor neighbours in some shires are forced to content themselves with Rye or Barley yea and in time of dearth many with bread made either of beans, pease or oats of which scourge the poorest do soonest taste, sith they are least able to provide themselves of better.’

^{page 391 note 1} Sir William St. Loe had a servant called Mousehall.

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