Plan a Visit to Hardwick Hall and Encounter Tudor Celebrity Bess of Hardwick

Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire, one of the UK's most complete Tudor houses, became famous almost as soon as it was built more than 400 years ago. The rhyming couplet, "Hardwick Hall, more glass than wall" was the way locals expressed their awe at the huge windows and lacy construction of a house that people said looked, when lit up at night, like a lantern on a hill.

The Extravagant Bess of Hardwick

The house was the extravagant project of Elizabeth, Countess of Shrewsbury, known as Bess of Hardwick. After Queen Elizabeth I, she was the wealthiest and most powerful woman of the Elizabethan Age. She wasn't shy about showing off either. Click on the photo above, to enlarge it, and you will see her monogram "ES" worked in stonework lace along the top of Hardwick Hall. Throughout Hardwick Hall, there are examples of that monogram, carved in stone and wood and worked into the many embroideries and tapestries for which the house is famous. According to the stories, every servant at Hardwick Hall, both men and women, had to spend part of their time stitching the elaborate hangings that now make up Europe's finest collection of 16th and 17th century embroideries.

Today the house is as she left it, having been maintained by her descendants, the Dukes of Devonshire, for hundreds of years until given to the National Trust.

Hardwick Hall is surrounded by 500 acres of parkland and has walled courtyards enclosing herb gardens, orchards and lawns.
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